HIGH Tutorials that help me get better at Lumines.

LOW Visual overload can make it hard to focus.

WTF How is the soundtrack this good?

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi everyone, Eugene Sax here with another review from GameCritics.com.

I haven’t played a lot of Lumines, historically.

The remastered version from 2018 was my first intro to the series, and honestly… well, I didn’t really enjoy that first pass at it. It felt too loud, both audio and visually, and I couldn’t wrap my head around the horizontal puzzle style. Knowing that the people behind Tetris Effect were also behind Lumines, though, I wanted to give it another shot and see if this new entry was a better way to get into this franchise.

Mea culpa, Lumines — I was wrong about you. (At least in some ways.)

Lumines: Arise is a block dropping puzzle in conversation with Tetris, but rather than the classic tetrominos filling horizontal lines, it instead focuses on asking the player to create 2×2 blocks anywhere on a horizontal plane. Blocks drop from the top of the screen, and players need to move them around in order to create 2×2, 3×3, or larger, in order to score points. A “timeline” moves across the screen and erases any complete blocks it comes across, clearing more room for players to create more blocks, and so on. There is also a rare “chain block” that will allow all linked blocks of the same color to be erased from the timeline, even if they’re not in the shape of a square.

The big mechanical addition to this version is “burst”.

As players create blocks, a meter will fill at the top of the playfield. At any point, players will be able to activate the burst, which then stops blocks from falling for a few moments. If players can create a block during this burst period, it will cause blocks of the opposite color to fly above the screen. Players can continue and make more fly up. All of those blocks come rushing back down once the burst is over, then creating a large chunk of squares to combo with.

Gameplay is broken up into a couple of modes for Arise.

Journey takes players through sets of stages (four or five, normally) with increasing difficulty as things progress. Playlist mode allows players to combine their favorite stages together in a custom order to play, or just to watch if they want to take in the visuals and music. Lastly, there’s multiplayer, which consists of some solo leaderboard competition or battle modes.

I also will shout out the tutorials specifically as Arise tailors them to new players and gives small missions that make it easy to understand and learn not only how to play, but also how to grasp more advanced techniques. These tutorials made me better in a way other puzzle titles haven’t.

At this point in the review, it feels a little like burying the lead to only just now mention the visuals and the music.

Since each stage only has two colors players need to match, this mechanical simplicity allows for some creative and striking ways to keep the play field visually interesting, and the developers lean hard into delivering over-the-top sound and graphics, far above what you might expect for a puzzle title.

One in particular that I enjoyed was a food-themed level. Blocks started as red apples and green melons, but then changed to broccoli and tomatoes as I got further in, while classical string music played in the background. Another had orbs of fish and hermit crab shells that changed color to reflect the sun setting on the beach landscape behind the playfield while listening to slow, smooth pop vocals. The visuals and music combine masterfully to pull players into Arise on a level above just block-matching, and it eats up time in a way that hasn’t happened to me in a long while.

With that said, some of the levels do get overwhelming as previous versions of the game. However, there is a moment of pause and the music fades out between each song, giving a welcome break to catch your breath and reset before going into the next stage. There are also a wealth of accessibility options that allow players to adjust any of the visual stimuli including background effects, particle effects on the playfield, and so on. If it’s too much to take in visually, it can be turned down.

While my memories of playing it in the past weren’t great, the masterful music and visual presence combined in Lumines: Arise really turned me around on the series. It’s not one to miss!

For me, Lumines: Arise gets 8.5 blocks exploding into glitter out of 10.

Disclosures: This game is developed by Enhance and Monstars, Inc. and published by Enhance. It is currently available on PS5, PSVR2 and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 6.5 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. Around 1 hour was spent in multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated E and contains Mild Fantasy Violence.  The blocks will explode into particles on screen, fantasy violence amounts to spiders and snakes that fight each other in the background (but these can be turned off in accessibility menus).

Colorblind Modes: There are multiple colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: Sound is not needed to complete the game. Captions for character dialogue can be resized. The game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: The controls are completely remappable.

The post Lumines Arise VIDEO Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Soaring around the fountain in “Romance”.

LOW Being repeatedly led to my death by the little light in “Hope”.

WTF What is with the giant snails and flowers?

As one might surmise from the title, Arise: A Simple Story isn’t trying to do anything particularly interesting or unique.

In its first moments, a burly, beardy fellow is cremated and almost immediately awakens on a snowy mountain lit by a star. From this alone it’s easy to guess that what follows will be some form of reminiscence or purgatory accompanied by twinkly and sentimental music, and that’s essentially accurate. This is well-worn ground that legions of indie games have trod, and Arise just barely rises above similar works.

The principal gameplay hook in Arise is the ability to scrub forward and backward in time. Tilting the right stick to one side or the other moves time rapidly, and pulling one of the triggers freezes it. Depending on what level one is playing, this means moving from one part of day to another, moving from the beginning of an earthquake to the end, or even between seasons.

All of this allows Arise’s burly protagonist to traverse its levels. Advancing a season might cause a lake’s level to rise, floating a log into position so the man can jump a gap. In one beautiful visual, giant flowers in a field turn their faces to follow the sun, becoming giant tilting platforms under the player’s control. By freezing time, the man can also do things like crossing a falling log while it’s in midair.

Given that this important function is mapped to the right stick, one might guess that the camera is not under player control. Rather, it moves into preset positions as the player progresses. This ends up being frustrating throughout the adventure because of the effect it has on platforming.

Jumping gaps in Arise has an exceptionally bad feel, and even when the camera is properly oriented, it’s unusually easy to miss a landing or overrun an edge. The fixed perspective frequently compounded this problem by obscuring the view, leading to large numbers of missed jumps, often under conditions that made it unclear whether that jump could even be made.

The one salve of a fixed camera in a title like this is that it should be easy to arrange the levels in such a way that the player’s eye is drawn towards the next step in traversal, but that doesn’t happen in Arise. On several occasions — and this is a short game — the camera pointed away from the path I needed to take next. On others, it was pointed the right way, but muddy colors and poorly-composed shots hid the path forward from view.

The muddy colors arise because many of the levels are dark and grim. The protagonist is apparently a prehistoric man of some kind, and predictable tragedies and fears afflict him and his wife, who is the motivation for the journey.

While many of the levels are plausible environments (northern pine forest is the setting for about half of the adventure) I enjoyed Arise most when it was being whimsical and figurative. Its garden with giant flowers, mushrooms, and snails was lovely, as was the “Fruit” level reflecting the time when the man and his wife were expecting.

The most effective level was “Solace”, which included an excellent metaphor for rebuilding after a tragedy by making the man literally pull a world together. I also loved the many spots where magic winds lifted the man off the ground and carried him through the environment (in “Solace” they keep carrying him away from his wife).

The time-scrubbing mechanic in Arise is interesting and the many of the levels have a compelling concept. It also offers several visually striking moments and in certain places, it delivers on its emotional content. Unfortunately, it also has too many muddy, unclear visuals for a work of its brevity, and the core platforming disappoints. I wish I could give it a full-throated endorsement, but in the end this is a well-worn theme and Arise: A Simple Story falters in too many places to be truly notable.

Disclosures: This game is developed by Piccolo and published by Techland. It is currently available on PC, PS4, and XBox One. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS4. Approximately 6 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. One hour of play was spent in two-player mode, in which the second player controls time and the first player controls the protagonist.

Parents: This game has been rated E by the ESRB. There are no descriptors.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: There is no speech or significant in-game text of any kind and there are no sound cues. The audio of this game shouldn’t pose any additional challenge, so I evaluate it as fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable.

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