This review should have been in over a week ago, but some odd circumstances, which I mentioned in my review-in-progress, kept that from happening. The good news is that the team at Enhance/Monstars were finally able to reproduce the issue I was having and figure out how to fix it. The better news is, if they’re willing to go to that effort for a bug that I would be pretty confident in saying only I have ever managed to trigger in gameplay, is a great sign for how much they care about what they’re making. So, here we are, back on track, with my thoughts on Lumines Arise.
Like Enhance’s previous work, Tetris Effect Connected, Lumines Arise wraps the familiar puzzle gameplay of Lumines in a visually, aurally, and tactically stimulating package. It’s still very simple to learn the basics, but there is enough depth here to keep you wanting to play the game over and over again.
The premise is simple. 2×2 blocks, with two color possibilities, fall into the playfield. You’ll need to place the blocks so that they form at least a 2×2 cube of the same color. Each block can be rotated, and blocks that overhang a ledge will drop down to the lowest part of the playfield. As you do this, a glowing timeline synced to the music sweeps past and clears out the formed up blocks.
Clearing blocks will fill up your BURST meter faster, and once it reaches 50% or greater, you will be able to enter BURST mode. Here, you have a set number of sweeps where the timeline does not clear the field. Your goal is to stack up the largest combo you can during this time, and once it’s up, the timeline resumes its work, ticking up the combo meter with a very satisfying count-up. Afterward, the rest of the blocks drop down, potentially creating their own cubes to be cleared on the next pass.
Occasionally, a linker block will come along that, when slotted down, links itself to every adjoining block of the same color. These are rare, but they let you clear out large sections of the playfield that aren’t quite formed cubes, but are still touching. The result of which are even more potential cubes cleared, as the non-matching colored blocks drop after the timeline sweeps past.
It’s a bit overwhelming to get started, but after a couple of games, things start to feel right. Lumines’ gameplay is a bit different to what folks might be used to with games like Tetris or Bejeweled, but the formula is and always has been solid. Once your brain adjusts, it starts to feel really, really good.
I mean that quite literally, too. Like Tetris Effect, Lumines Arise takes these mechanics and amps them up with vibrant, wild visuals, a dynamic soundtrack that builds as you play, and controller feedback that brings tactility to the music. It’s designed to tweak your senses, which has the very real result of tweaking your emotions. I have had to stop for a few minutes after a stage at times because I was feeling overwhelmed and euphoric. Dare I say it, too, I was a bit teary-eyed at points. This is precisely the kind of rush that so many games strive to achieve, but seldom do.
Lumines Arise doesn’t suffer from a shortage of content, either. Journey mode is the game’s main solo campaign, and is necessary to complete if you want to get the most out of the other modes. Playlist mode lets you create custom playlists using the tracks you’ve unlocked. Once you complete Journey you get a Survival mode that opens up. Plus, there are Events and Missions to take part in. If you prefer to play the game with other people, there’s a set of Multiplayer options to dive into. These work well, but weren’t for me. Multiplayer games in general, aren’t.
As in my other reviews, I tend to go into the Accessibility options that a game has, if any. I won’t go into too much detail here, as I’ve already written two articles on Lumines Arise that already went into detail on these. If you want to read more, you can find my preview here and my Review-In-Progress here.
To briefly touch on some points, though, the Accessibility options in Lumines Arise are excellent. They fall into three basic categories, Visual, Content, and Gameplay. There is one option I will focus on, though, and that is the very first one in the Accessibility menu, No Stress Lumines. This mode lets you choose whether you want the blocks to not fall until you tell them to, to keep playing if you top out, or both. I can’t stress how important this is. This is an option that fundamentally changes the game from a frantic and intense experience into a game you can play at your own pace. It is, in fact, how I played through the game, and, in a roundabout way, the thing that surfaced the crash bug, as playing slow meant spending a lot of time in each stage, and in GOLDFISH TANGO, that triggered a very rare bug.
I do still have some suggestions related to visibility. Some block combinations are still way too similar, making them hard to parse. My suggestion of a forced grayscale mode on the blocks might help there, as long as the difference between the two colors is always stark. You are able to turn the playfield transparency off, which is essential, however in one particular stage it adopts a much lighter color, effectively negating the contrast that you turn the transparency off to gain. Finally, the HUD elements on the left, right, and the staging area up top may as well not exist on some stages, because they vanish into the background and the subtle shadow on the text isn’t enough. The option to turn on a partial transparent background under those areas would be very nice. Despite these points, I have to hand it to the team at Enhance for being so on-board with Accessibility.
Lumines Arise is, to sum it up in a single word, brilliant. Its simple to learn mechanics make it easy to get started, but very difficult to stop once you do. It’s a sensory feast for three of the five senses, and I suspect that’s only because smell-o-vision and taste-o-tron never took off, or Enhance would find a way to incorporate those, too. I’ll be playing this game for many months to come. I hope that there are plans to add DLC. Maybe reimagine some of the older tracks in this new format and turn Lumines Arise into the de facto way of experiencing a Lumines game. As it is, it’s the best version of Lumines, full stop. Why stop there, though, when there are so many other awesome tracks the series has hosted over the years? Or, maybe bringing in tracks from Tetris Effect? Oh, the possibilities…
This review should have been in over a week ago, but some odd circumstances, which I mentioned in my review-in-progress, kept that from happening. The good news is that the team at Enhance/Monstars were finally able to reproduce the issue I was having and figure out how to fix it. The better news is, if they’re willing to go to that effort for a bug that I would be pretty confident in saying only I have ever managed to trigger in gameplay, is a great sign for how much they care about what they’re making.
This review should have been in over a week ago, but some odd circumstances, which I mentioned in my review-in-progress, kept that from happening. The good news is that the team at Enhance/Monstars were finally able to reproduce the issue I was having and figure out how to fix it. The better news is, if they’re willing to go to that effort for a bug that I would be pretty confident in saying only I have ever managed to trigger in gameplay, is a great sign for how much they care about what they’re making. So, here we are, back on track, with my thoughts on Lumines Arise.
Like Enhance’s previous work, Tetris Effect Connected, Lumines Arise wraps the familiar puzzle gameplay of Lumines in a visually, aurally, and tactically stimulating package. It’s still very simple to learn the basics, but there is enough depth here to keep you wanting to play the game over and over again.
The premise is simple. 2×2 blocks, with two color possibilities, fall into the playfield. You’ll need to place the blocks so that they form at least a 2×2 cube of the same color. Each block can be rotated, and blocks that overhang a ledge will drop down to the lowest part of the playfield. As you do this, a glowing timeline synced to the music sweeps past and clears out the formed up blocks.
Clearing blocks will fill up your BURST meter faster, and once it reaches 50% or greater, you will be able to enter BURST mode. Here, you have a set number of sweeps where the timeline does not clear the field. Your goal is to stack up the largest combo you can during this time, and once it’s up, the timeline resumes its work, ticking up the combo meter with a very satisfying count-up. Afterward, the rest of the blocks drop down, potentially creating their own cubes to be cleared on the next pass.
Occasionally, a linker block will come along that, when slotted down, links itself to every adjoining block of the same color. These are rare, but they let you clear out large sections of the playfield that aren’t quite formed cubes, but are still touching. The result of which are even more potential cubes cleared, as the non-matching colored blocks drop after the timeline sweeps past.
It’s a bit overwhelming to get started, but after a couple of games, things start to feel right. Lumines’ gameplay is a bit different to what folks might be used to with games like Tetris or Bejeweled, but the formula is and always has been solid. Once your brain adjusts, it starts to feel really, really good.
I mean that quite literally, too. Like Tetris Effect, Lumines Arise takes these mechanics and amps them up with vibrant, wild visuals, a dynamic soundtrack that builds as you play, and controller feedback that brings tactility to the music. It’s designed to tweak your senses, which has the very real result of tweaking your emotions. I have had to stop for a few minutes after a stage at times because I was feeling overwhelmed and euphoric. Dare I say it, too, I was a bit teary-eyed at points. This is precisely the kind of rush that so many games strive to achieve, but seldom do.
Lumines Arise doesn’t suffer from a shortage of content, either. Journey mode is the game’s main solo campaign, and is necessary to complete if you want to get the most out of the other modes. Playlist mode lets you create custom playlists using the tracks you’ve unlocked. Once you complete Journey you get a Survival mode that opens up. Plus, there are Events and Missions to take part in. If you prefer to play the game with other people, there’s a set of Multiplayer options to dive into. These work well, but weren’t for me. Multiplayer games in general, aren’t.
As in my other reviews, I tend to go into the Accessibility options that a game has, if any. I won’t go into too much detail here, as I’ve already written two articles on Lumines Arise that already went into detail on these. If you want to read more, you can find my preview here and my Review-In-Progress here.
To briefly touch on some points, though, the Accessibility options in Lumines Arise are excellent. They fall into three basic categories, Visual, Content, and Gameplay. There is one option I will focus on, though, and that is the very first one in the Accessibility menu, No Stress Lumines. This mode lets you choose whether you want the blocks to not fall until you tell them to, to keep playing if you top out, or both. I can’t stress how important this is. This is an option that fundamentally changes the game from a frantic and intense experience into a game you can play at your own pace. It is, in fact, how I played through the game, and, in a roundabout way, the thing that surfaced the crash bug, as playing slow meant spending a lot of time in each stage, and in GOLDFISH TANGO, that triggered a very rare bug.
I do still have some suggestions related to visibility. Some block combinations are still way too similar, making them hard to parse. My suggestion of a forced grayscale mode on the blocks might help there, as long as the difference between the two colors is always stark. You are able to turn the playfield transparency off, which is essential, however in one particular stage it adopts a much lighter color, effectively negating the contrast that you turn the transparency off to gain. Finally, the HUD elements on the left, right, and the staging area up top may as well not exist on some stages, because they vanish into the background and the subtle shadow on the text isn’t enough. The option to turn on a partial transparent background under those areas would be very nice. Despite these points, I have to hand it to the team at Enhance for being so on-board with Accessibility.
Lumines Arise is, to sum it up in a single word, brilliant. Its simple to learn mechanics make it easy to get started, but very difficult to stop once you do. It’s a sensory feast for three of the five senses, and I suspect that’s only because smell-o-vision and taste-o-tron never took off, or Enhance would find a way to incorporate those, too. I’ll be playing this game for many months to come. I hope that there are plans to add DLC. Maybe reimagine some of the older tracks in this new format and turn Lumines Arise into the de facto way of experiencing a Lumines game. As it is, it’s the best version of Lumines, full stop. Why stop there, though, when there are so many other awesome tracks the series has hosted over the years? Or, maybe bringing in tracks from Tetris Effect? Oh, the possibilities…
by Filippo Dinolfo
