Review: Lumines Arise Does Feel Like Tetris Effect
Lumines is a puzzle series that’s always blended actions in time with the music and falling block puzzles. Is it like Tetris ? In that both involve falling blocks and clearing the space in the name of progress and scoring, yes. But they are unique entities in the same genre. Yet since Lumines Arise is a new game from Tetris Effect developers Enhance Games , it does feel a lot more like that title both when it comes to its ambiance and the modes Enhance offered. However, I also feel like Tetris Effect is the better of the two.
Lumines Arise is a dropping-block puzzle game in which 2x2 cubes of two colors drop, and you then need to create Squares that will be cleared when a line called the Timeline passes over them. You get points for this based on the size and eventual chains. Your goal is to manage the blocks that pile up on the screen while also building larger series of Squares for greater rewards when they clear, taking care not to get piled up and place them in time for the constantly looping Timeline following in sync with the music. Journey is the main single-player experience, which involves clearing across certain courses, though customized experiences can be made with unlocked Journey parts in Playlists. Missions lets you go through more brief challenges, while Multiplayer takes you online for matches.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9_1r0fYt9k
The thing that keeps Lumines Arise from being as sublime an experience as Tetris Effect isn’t even Enhance or Monstars’ fault. It’s the innate nature of this particular puzzle game. With Tetris Effect, every session could feel like soothing and ethereal even when faced with overwhelming odds and strong opponents. The speed at which the Timeline loops combined with the limited time before a the 2x2 blocks drop in Lumines add a degree of ever-present pressure that I find more intense and stressful than Tetris .
I’d almost say that Enhance and Monstars themselves even realized this and implemented the Burst feature into Lumines Arise to help mitigate that anxiety. As you continue to build squares and clear the field, you’ll gain the ability to eventually unleash a half or full Burst. This briefly gives you a few seconds to stop the Timeline from clearing squares when it passes. So you can build up an incredibly large combo and profit from a massive, stage-sweeping “clear” if you enable it at the right time and drop blocks to extend the Square’s range and combo as quickly as possible.
Images via Enhance
I also found the Training and Challenges stages in the Missions section helped with overcoming my potential panic in certain situations in Lumines Arise . Both focus on more brief and targeted experiences to work on a specific situation. The Training is essentially a hands-on tutorial separate from the brief one we can opt into the first time we play the game. You can access that again there, and learn how to clear certain situations, getting points that can be used to customize a Loomii Avatar when you do. The Challenges sort of work similar, but expect you to do your best in areas like growth, chains, and Bursts.
I do think that, while the Lumines Arise ambiance and experience feels very similar to Tetris Effect both in tone and audio and visual experiences, I do think the “shifts” in appearance here get a little more distracting than in Tetris Effect . I think this is perhaps due to Tetris having its always recognizable Tetrominos and not requiring us to distinguish between different “types” for matching and clearing, while in Lumines we must be very aware of the two different types of blocks in each 2x2 drop when making Squares. The visual changes all look quite neat! There are some incredible design themes and the UI is handled well. Yet I found it would take me two or three Timeline sweeps before I’d get accustomed to the two new, differing types of shapes compared to the previous one in something like Journey. It may be a personal thing, but I found the shifts more distracting here than in Tetris Effect.
Images via Enhance
As for multiplayer, I didn’t get to experience a ton of matches in the period ahead of launch. What was there worked well, and involved “fighting” against a second person in situations that made use of the new Burst mechanic for high scores and Dig Down to attempt to deal with blocks from a different perspective. It seemed to work quite well at launch, and I’m hoping players will embrace it after.
With Lumines Arise, the Tetris Effect developers delivered another puzzle game that is gorgeous to look at and works well. I do feel it isn’t as approachable as their previous effort. But this is a very capable Lumines game that offers a range of single-player options that left me quite impressed.
Lumines Arise is available on the PS5 and PC. A demo is available.
The post Review: Lumines Arise Does Feel Like Tetris Effect appeared first on Siliconera .
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