Lumines Live! (Xbox 360)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 3.0 stars Good
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 6.6 (3.0 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Jeff Gerstmann
• Reviewed on: 10/18/2006
• Released on: 10/18/2006
• Originally published on GameSpot: Lumines Live! (Xbox 360) Review

One of the brightest games available at the launch of the PSP was Lumines. It's a smart, stylish puzzle game that redecorates itself as you play, delivering a somewhat rhythmic twist on the typical block-dropping action you'd expect from this sort of game. Now, that same portable puzzle gameplay is available on the Xbox 360 as Lumines Live!, via the Xbox Live Arcade. While the gameplay remains the same and the skinned-up presentation still has style, weirdly tiered access to the game's different modes and a fairly high price make this version less of a must-have than you might initially suspect.

At its core, Lumines Live! is functionally identical to the PSP game. You are given a wide pit to drop blocks made up of four squares into, and those squares come in two colors. When you match up those colored squares to form a block of four squares in the pit, it lights up. A timing bar moves across the pit in time with the music, and when the bar crosses a lit-up completed block, it disappears. Additional bonuses can be had for creating multiple lit-up blocks, all of which vanish as the timing bar sweeps across the screen. It's an elegant game that places a light emphasis on rhythm, but not so much that you'd ever call it a rhythm game. You'll occasionally get a block that has an icon on it. Creating a lit-up square that includes that icon-bearing block causes all blocks of the same color to vanish, provided they're connected to that initial block.

This same basic gameplay moves across multiple modes, but the challenge mode is the game's main form of play. Here, you start out with one visual style, and as you play and reach certain unspecified milestones, the game's graphics completely change and a new song starts playing, all without the game missing a beat. Your goal is to eventually see and unlock all of the skins, which you can then play in any order via the game's skin edit mode. No, it doesn't let you design your own skin--it just lets you play the game's skins in any order. There's also a time attack mode, where you have to bust as many blocks as you can in a set amount of time, as well as puzzle and mission modes, which ask you to complete very specific tasks to proceed. Overall, the key aspect to note about Lumines' gameplay is that it's extremely addictive and very slick. That addictive nature translates through all of the different modes, including the multiplayer.

As far as multiplayer goes, you can play against other players over Xbox Live in two-player matches. Here, you share the same pit, but it's split down the middle evenly between the two players. Both players drop blocks, and at the end of each pass of the timing bar, the player who caused the most blocks to disappear earns a segment of the other player's turf. This creates a sort of tug-of-war feel, and battling back from a huge disadvantage is both possible and satisfying. The player who forces the other player out of action wins. The game doesn't tolerate network latency very well, though. In a laggy game, the controls become extremely unresponsive, forcing you to sometimes hit buttons more than once to get it to accept your input. You can also play this mode versus CPU-controlled opponents in the vs. CPU mode. But in a ridiculous twist, only the first stage of this mode is available. Upon completing it, a message appears stating that you'll have to purchase a separate vs. CPU pack to play the rest of this mode.

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