Miziguchi sure knows how to put together an hour of relaxing gameplay that stretches the player into taking different approaches, track by track, skin by skin. I realized in completing the remaster that there were some tunes that I hadn’t heard (at least while playing) in years. Lumines is, if anything, an underrated puzzle game that stands on its own in terms of originality. It’s also interesting to play through it after Tetris Effect and to see which ideas Miziguchi decided to keep and which he’s moved past.

Lumines is a game that in concept works really well, you have a simple 2 colour matching puzzle game that plays to music and shifts through stark visual themes and audio genres - however the stylistic choices make for a singularly ugly audio-visual experience.

The gameplay itself is always great to come back to, I actually have a lot of fun with the colour matching, finding patterns, trying to create combinations by placing the asymmetric pieces, and the challenge of timing your placement so you don't overlap with the sweeping bar. This is all well designed gameplay that is engaging and fun, but the accompanying music and art, and the way it's implemented results in an experience I can only tolerate in small bursts.

The music choices are a mixed bag, by which I mean it feels like someone dumped a bunch of discount demo tracks in a bag and pulled the play order out at random. The PSP games had a few early 2000's rock and pop hits that themselves didn't work together, mixed in with a variety of generic in-house songs from across the genre spectrum. These tracks are then broken down into samples which play based on your gameplay actions. Sometimes it works but often this approach turns the song into a random cacophony of noises with half the 'song' missing.

Remastered features the in-house tracks exclusively and hasn't managed to do any better with them. You jump wildly between genres, the playlist has no stylistic consistency, and for whatever reason the sound director on these games loves this specific blend of loud distorted noises that appear constantly. Any one of these issues by itself would be tolerable, but the resulting mix of miss-matched music, the way it's broken down and spat back at you as you play, and the clear lack of theme to the soundtrack makes every entry in the series the worst sounding music games I've played.

Lumines feels like the result of a really great premise for a game put in the hands of someone who has no artistic taste. The music is wrong, the sampling is wrong, and even the colour schemes that rotate with each track can range from great looking to 'I can barely see what I'm doing'. There's an artistic deafness to the series that runs deep into every entry. It's a testament to the strength of the gameplay that I end up coming back to each one, hoping desperately they got it right this time, only to be disappointed again. As such, remastered will remain a tolerable game to play on mute.

De nombreuses heures passées sur PSP, un grand nombre déjà passées sur Switch et encore bien d'autres en perspective. 

Que dire de Lumines qui n'ait déjà été dit ? Pas grand chose... C'est un classique du genre depuis longtemps. Une alchimie parfaite entre le jeu musical, d'arcade et de puzzle bien sûr, avec de superbes effets visuels et sonores calibrés sur l'action et la musique. Pas un puzzle complexe, mais terriblement prenant.

La simplicité de son concept le rend d'ailleurs accessible à tous, même aux dichromates, c'est dire ! cela grâce à l'ingéniosité d'avoir borné le jeu à seulement deux coloris très différents à chaque tableau. En jeu, uniquement des cubes, composés de quatre autres colorés, pour seulement huit formes possibles et un système d'élimination par balayage horizontal. Son concept rapidement pris en main, l'excellence de sa réalisation sonore et visuelle, ainsi que les choix artistiques éclectiques font que je ne me lasse pas d'y revenir pour une ou deux parties.

Je ne saurais juger la qualité du remaster en tant que tel. Les heures jouées sur PSP sont loin maintenant. Toutefois, en ce qui me concerne, j'ai retrouvé la joie des parties passées...c'est tout ce que je demandais ! Les modes supplémentaires sont cependant un plus appréciable.

"World of silence
Creepin' sightless time
Port of sadness
Sleepin' flightless mind

World of silence
Blinkin' farthest light
Road of brightness
I will get there

And shinin', and shinin
And shinin', and shinin
And shinin', and shinin
And shinin', and shinin..."

honestly a dope and addicting little puzzle game. If Tetris is a short sprint, Lumines is a marathon. Expect to spend at least an hour straight doing a run as there are a lot of backgrounds to go through. The game itself isn't that deep though, and I think there are even ways to theoretically play indefinitely so yea. Definitely a vibe game, each of the different backgrounds gives an entirely different new vibe to the game that I enjoy, and some of the OST songs are hood classics. Mizuguchi's games do not ever miss.

Played on both Switch and Steam. (Note: I have not played the original, so this is my first interaction with the game and have really nothing to say on its stature as a remaster.)

Slick and inventive - Lumines is a great update to the tetromino puzzles; it's focus on music and style gives it more than just an added personality but an extra layer of player involvement.

For it is how you play the game that determines the texture of the sound scape for the songs you play with as well as how fast you need to make you decisions. In effect, the game allows you to become a digital-age DJ. Once you become adept to the game's techniques and approaches, you''ll come to appreciate your control over how the song develops as you move through the puzzle.