Lumines

I was never that into Tetris. Don't get me wrong, it's a stone cold classic and there's plenty to be said for its purist puzzle game mechanics. Basic Tetris was never flashy, it's nothing shocking at this point, but it completely set the standards for any falling block puzzle game to follow it. That said, I was always more of a Puyo, Puzzle Drop, and Columns guy. Their more combo focused gameplay appealed far more to my unfocused and impatient nature, plus, who doesn't love seeing combo notifications flying all over the screen?

Lumines definitely compares more easily to the latter games than Tetris, but its doomed to comparison just by how oversaturated the market of falling block style puzzle games was by Tetris and assorted spinoffs, which is totally unfair to Lumines. Lumines will never be as technically refined as Tetris, but its style and presentation combined with a genius combo system take it above and beyond the competition, and without a doubt it falls as my favorite pure mechanical puzzle game of all time.

That presentation is unlike anything else. It's a hypnotic trip through psychedelic trance and house beats with jarring audio clips blasting on each combo, quickly changing into the next track and theme as soon as clearing enough blocks to progress. It's an experience on headphones I can really only compare to standing in an obnoxiously loud arcade with 4 or 5 machines blaring over everything else. It's an atmosphere you get caught it, and there's plenty to be said for Lumines as a psychedelic experience of sound and color over strictly a falling block puzzle, and that alone probably turns off purists, but the actual mechanics of the game are just as brilliant.

I could ramble on about the mechanics of Lumines, but it's a falling block puzzle, you essentially know what to expect, although this time focused on matching squares. However, the most important innovation of Lumines is the fact that matched blocks do not immediately clear, instead a line moves from one end of the screen to the other, clearing blocks as it moves from left to right. This may sound like a minor change, but this enables the player to drop blocks outrunning the clear line, creating combos very naturally, making the experience more reactive than long term plans, massively increasing the pace of the game.

Now, I should clarify, the only way to play this game are two modes, the Basic and Endless Challenges. There are other game types but they're strictly gimmicks and not very fleshed out, especially the puzzle and 2 player modes which are as janky and unbalanced as can be. This is pretty much strictly a single player game in most concerns, and almost all of my 200 hours of the remastered rerelease of this game are in the challenge types.

All that said, the performance drops frames on high enough combos, the Endless Challenge's speed after level 300 is bullshit, the audio quality is offensively poor at times, and occasionally a falling block is cleared while passing by at the right moment on top of the clear line. None of these are gamebreaking faults, but they're definitely worth noting in some way, because they definitely affect the experience. The Lumines Remastered rerelease definitely helps it, but it's still not perfect. Sadly, there is yet to be a perfect release of this game, but still, wholeheartedly recommend this one to anyone and everyone interested in video games. Fair warning, you might lose all your time.