Lumines Remastered

Genre: Falling Block Puzzle

Players: 1-2 Competitive (Local), Online Leaderboards

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Review:

Lumines is a puzzle game in the vein of block-dropping games like Tetris and Dr. Mario that places a heavy emphasis on the audiovisual presentation. It’s a rare example of a puzzle game that’s actually nice to look at and listen to, and on top of that, it’s pretty fun to play too! This series has been around since the launch of Sony’s PSP handheld, but this release marks the series’ first time on a Nintendo platform, and it is very welcome!

The gameplay of Lumines is pretty simple – two by two blocks drop down, and you must place them to match the two colors they’re made from, trying to make squares and rectangles of a solid color. However, when you make a match, it isn’t removed immediately. Instead, it stays on the board until a line moves across it.

Here’s where the audiovisual part of things fits into it, because that line moves at a different speed depending on the “skin” that’s currently playing, with each skin bringing a different look, soundtrack, sound effects, and tempo. The faster the line moves, the less time you have to wait for blocks to clear, but it may also make it harder to avoid making a match while the line crosses it, which can cause only half of it to clear and mess you up.

Keeping this in mind is part of the game’s strategy, as is adjusting to the change when the game shifts from one skin to the next, giving this game some good depth. However, it remains very accessible, and just about anyone can pick up a controller and play it.

The music, sound and visuals of this game are phenomenal – the soundtrack is a great mix of very disparate songs, paired with very different-looking visuals, so you’re bound to find you have favorites among the bunch (and then you can specifically put those favorites into a playlist of sorts). The game’s visuals look much-improved in HD, and they already looked fantastic back on the PSP.

In addition to revamping the game’s visuals, this game also brings in some extra game modes and options that were only added in the second game in the series, as well as adding in a rumble that by default shakes in time with the beat. It’s a fun idea to immerse players, but it kinda’ gets a little tiresome after a short while and I found myself very grateful that there was an option to reduce the rumble to happen less often or shut it off entirely.

I suppose my biggest disappointment here is that, with two mode-specific exceptions, the “skins” in this game is only the music from the first game in the series, and I really would have liked the option to get more, even if it meant paying for it as DLC. This series has some great music and visuals, and it would have been nice to be able to get them all in one title for once, to have a truly definitive Lumines experience.

However, what’s on offer here is still excellent – this absolutely the best version of a must-have puzzle game, one of the best in the genre, and fans of games like Tetris absolutely need to get Lumines on their Switch.

tl;dr – Lumines is a Tetris-style Puzzle game where players drop blocks and match colors in the shape of squares and rectangles, all to the tempo of the game’s wide variety of music and visuals. The gameplay is solid, the fantastic presentation looks even better in HD, and in short for fans of this genre, this should be considered an absolute must-have.

Grade: A-

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