Lumines II (PSP) – Review

With the success of Lumines as a launch title for the PSP last year, it was no surpise to see a follow up to the game, though surprisingly with the game out for XBox Live and soon for the PS3, it may seem a bit much Lumines overkill. Particularly with the fact that the core gameplay hasn’t changed, the only direction that Lumines can be taken is to add more “skins” and visual improves to the game. For the most part, that’s what Lumines II, developed by Q? Entertainment and distributed by Buena Vista Games, for the PSP offers; old skins have been included and redone, but the game features a lot more skins as well as licensed music from a variety of modern artists. Unfortunately, while the core game is still good, it doesn’t have the freshness that the first game had, and the inclusion of sort artists, over others, feels more like a way to push the music as opposed to selecting the best music for the game.

Lumines II (PSP) – Initial Impressions

Gameplay is for the most part the same as Lumines, but with the visual improvements that the Lumines Live adds (better visual indicators of score bonuses).

The one big thing is that among skins (including exisiting ones with updated graphics from the first game, and likely some of th new ones in Live) is that there are licensed songs with their music videos running behind the normal play.  Unfortunately, it looks like instead of switching to a new level after clearing so many squares with a video skin, you have to keep playing on that skin until the video completes (there’s still musical beats when you drop and clear blocks that work with the music).  The two videos I’ve hit aren’t hard skins, but I’m wondering if that’s true for all the cases.  More time is necessary to determine this.