Lumines

It's late and I want to go to bed but there's no way I can close my eyes and think of sleep when my brain is buzzing this much.

I finally got to the last skin of Lumines which has been something of a gaming holy grail. Videogames almost never create that anxious fast-beating heart when you get to a significant point anymore. Because almost all games save progress so that you never have to repeat levels, there's no real consequence when getting to a new section or level. Death in such a game means going back maybe 5 minutes.

I remember getting to the last level of Sonic the Hedgehog 2. (I remember the first game too but 2 was a much grander experience for me). I mean there were times when I would die on Hill Top Zone, and run out of continues. But when I got to Metropolis Zone...wow I had gotten so far in! And getting to the final boss, and dying...

...see dying was after over an hour's worth of play (or something like that) so it was real time you'd invested, it was a genuine loss to actually get game over.

It's funny though, I can complete sonic 2 every time now and probably not even need any continues. I don't know if that's just because I was crap then, or because I'm good now.

Anyway this was supposed to be a post about Lumines. It's hard to say what I'm feeling about this game right now without having the sun come up on me, but I think I can sum it up:

See at the left hand side I said this Blog was mostly about "Videogames, music, and art"? Well Lumines is a prime example of all three. As a videogame, it takes a tried and tested genre but manages to stay unique. Only having 2 colours, and having to make only squares gives it an elegant simplicity, but it's the sweeping bar that clears squares you've made that sets it apart. Most games will remove blocks as soon as the block falls, but the mechanic of waiting to land squares is a deep experience.

As music, it's an eclectic mix and it ties in with the gameplay. The fixed order of tracks means it's like an album with a defined tracklisting, and it's a battle to hear more tracks. It's even a battle to hear more of a particular track. There's nothing like wanting to hear the chorus of "Lights" but panicking that you may die before the verse is through. It's good music as well. I already had heard "Lights" several times before even owning a PSP so I knew what was coming. But that just made the anticipation greater, knowing what a treat I was in for and trying to imagine controlling the song like you do with the game.

As Art, well I'm talking about the visual side of things here. The video backgrounds add cues for the music - when a song is reaching a crescendo the background is doing so too, and that all contributes to that feeling of excitement and desperation that I was saying was missing from a lot of games. Mizuguchi could have gotten away with leaving the blocks and layout the same all the way through, it wouldn't have been a crime. But each skin has it's own style and the game is a fine example of graphic design.

It's not often that a videogame, nay, multimedia experience gets every element so right, but manages to marry several things like this together so well.

I love Meteos. The fact that Mizuguchi created this at pretty much the same time, and managed to cater it for the DS specifically just like Lumines only works on the PSP, it makes me admire the guy so much for getting it so right. But the complaint I now have of Meteos I suppose is more a complaint of the DS...I wish the sound on the DS was a bit better and less tinny. The CD quality Music of Lumines really makes the game, and Meteos used sound really well, but it lets the game down with its lo-fi compressed-ness. Generally it's not something that bothers me for DS games, but when Lumines got gameplay, lovely design*and* the sounds down so nicely, it's a shame that meteos only got 2 out of 3. It has brilliant design, brilliant ingenious gameplay, it just doesn't use sound in the same way.

I don't want to come across as too complainy of Meteos because I think it's my favourite DS game. It really is an accomplishment and I love how Meteos is a 10 minute game and Lumines is a 100 minute game; It's so considerate of Mizuguchi to cater to both my moods like that.

I can't wait for Every Extend Extra now. The gameplay was already quite fun, but really I think Mizuguchi has proved he's the king of integrating music with gameplay in a unique way (I mean, I haven't even made a comparison to Rez, yet) and there's just not enough of that touch in games. I know he'll do a good job.