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 Gorgeous aesthetics, a wonderful sense of synaesthesia.

LOW This was so close to being an amazing lowkey trans narrative.

WTF …There’s a kneeslide button?

The game industry has long held “playable movie” as a sort of pie-in-the-sky standard that many have been shooting for in one fashion or another. It’s a poor idea for a thousand different reasons, but after playing The Artful Escape it seems clear that the goal was simply wrong on its most basic level — they shouldn’t have been trying to make movies at all when they could have been making playable music videos.

The Artful Escape tells the story of young guitar player Francis Vendetti. Our hero wants to wail on his axe and belt out sci-fi paeans to the stars, but he’s grown up in the shadow of a world-famous folk musician uncle. He’s being crushed under the weight of everyone’s expectations until extraterrestrial visitors arrive to offer him a different path.

Coming from developers Beethoven & Dinosaur, this 2D musical narrative is, to me, the perfect interactive music video.

Technical mastery isn’t necessary for most of the experience — and I don’t say this as criticism. Moving Francis around limited environments and just clicking on things to get flavor text or to start a brief chat is enough to get things rolling in the early sections.

I won’t go into specifics about story beats since The Artful Escape is a short piece that is exactly as long as it needs to be (and not a moment longer!) but what I will say is that the lion’s share of the experience consists of opening one’s eyes as wide as possible, turning up the volume, and joining Francis as he runs, jumps and strums his way through a dozen psychedelic environments while his narrative of self-affirmation and confidence unrolls.  

Much like the non-musical sections, there’s not much technical skill required to make the music happen — and again, this is not a criticism. The Artful Escape isn’t about getting players to platform with pixel-perfect accuracy or mastering a blistering series of rapid-fire notes — it’s about immersing them in an overwhelming display of sound and visuals that successfully delivers intense energy and drive.

Francis will jump, slide and play his guitar (all single-button actions) through alien cities, across limitless deserts and among unknowable stars while sweeping tracks loop and dive. It’s quite difficult for words to capture the feeling of moving at speed while the riffs are flying and the screen is filled with glowing clouds, Lovecraftian herbivores and impossible architecture, but it was fantastic to be able to sit back and watch it all scroll by, each new vista more fantastical than the last, and every moment accompanied by electric audio powering the journey.

Every so often Francis will arrive at a test, of sorts — a gatekeeper or an entity who must be impressed with his prowess, and every one of them shares distinct facial features that mirror the buttons on a controller. At this point, The Artful Escape engages in a bit of Simon Says. The alien’s face will flash a series of notes, and Francis must respond in kind.  

These bits are brief, and in truth, none of them are demanding. However, I will say that there was a bit of mental disconnect for me when it came to the left shoulder button. Since it’s not clustered with the others, I had a ridiculously hard time coordinating it, and it was the only note I couldn’t nail with regularity. In such case, The Artful Escape is forgiving. There’s no penalty or failure condition, the notes simply repeat and give Francis another chance. The developers clearly understand the value of unbroken progression in a sensory experience like this, and they’re here to deliver it.

When Francis played his final set and the credits started rolling, I was quite glad to have played The Artful Escape. It is very clearly Its Own Thing, and not only is that thing pretty awesome, it’s just one more example that videogames are able to deliver a huge array of experiences that are all worthwhile in their own way. I love that Beethoven & Dinosaur brought their vision to my screen, and if nothing else, maybe this rock-fueled journey through the stars will get developers off of movies and on to music videos for a while.

Disclosures: This game is developed by Beethoven & Dinosaur and published by Annapurna Interactive. It is currently available on PC and XB. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the XBX. Approximately 4 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated E10+ and contains Alcohol Reference, Language, Mild Suggestive Themes, and Use of Tobacco. The official description reads as follows: This is a narrative adventure game in which players follow the story of Francis Vendetti as he embarks on a journey to find a stage persona. From a 2D side-scrolling perspective, players explore city streets, interact with characters, and traverse platform levels to advance the narrative. The game depicts some customizable outfits that are somewhat revealing (e.g., garter-belt lingerie, fishnets). Some characters are seen smoking cigarettes, and alcohol is referenced in the dialogue (e.g., “Think this place used to be a…possible hub of underage drinking”; “liquor license”; “champagne”). The word “bastard” appears in dialogue.

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

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: All dialogue is subtitled and the music sections offer full visual cues onscreen — it would be entirely possible to play this game without being able to hear the music. This game is fully accessible.

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

The post The Artful Escape Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.