Real Talk By: Kimulus (Andrew Kim)

Hello! It has been awhile since I have reviewed a game, but Kimulus is back! This time I will be reviewing Lumines for the PS Vita system.

Lumines is like a brand new Tetris for this generation. It combines music and puzzling into one neat little package and it will keep you going. If you are not familiar with the craze that started way back when the original PSP came out, I picked it up to see what it was all about, and happened to love it. It was brand new, innovative and very addictive. Now we have come full circle again. Just bought a new PS Vita and one of the Launch titles is Lumines. Thought I could re-live my glory days by purchasing this game. Also have to mention that we did buy Lumines for Xbox Live. I’m the right person to look at this title. Just saying.

First, when opening the game, I jumped straight to arcade mode. Normally that can be completed easily. Literally you could make a few laps around the selected tracks of Lumines. This time its more difficult. Make a lap by going over the songs again you’ve beaten. Lumines works like this: You make a block out of 2 colors. You must match one of those colors into 4 blocks creating a square. The player can make a combo by continuously adding 2 blocks of the same colors to make squares. If you do this, the song will progress with your movements and combos. So I continuously played the arcade game. Progressing for about 2 hours and 30 minutes. To my surprise I did not lap the track. The game indeed is an electronic symphony. My final score of the first game came to 550k and thats because the noggin was fried from playing so much. What impresses the most is the amount of songs the game has. Usually it takes at least an hour to lap over all the songs in Lumines.

Other than that the game is pretty much still the same. For those of you have played Lumines before there is one major change to the special block that makes the same colors disappear. You no longer have to form a square around the block to activate it. The player can put it anywhere and it will make the connecting colors disappear without forming a square. There is also another block that mixes the colors around (that’s my guess still haven’t figured it out what it does. It did save me a couple of times, but it also did harm) Other than new songs, it’s the same old Lumines that you know and love. However, this can be a double-edged sword for some. While the small tweaks and changes are good the only thing we found missing from this Lumines, is the innovation. Granted it is the 4th or 5th game of the series they can only improve this game by so much. Other than that, the fun factor is still there. This game is just simply great for the handheld gamer. Electronic Symphony is best playing in 1-2 hours bursts. After that your brain will be sizzled from all the puzzling.

Lumines: Electronic Symphony Gets

Out of Five

What’s Legit?

+Great selection of songs
+Visuals are great
+Same Lumines formula you know and love

What’s Perpetrating?

-Not that much improvement over the past Lumines games
-Playing long hours of Lumines might get a little repetitive.