Every block drop in Lumines is engineered to fire off a tiny tingle in the player’s brain. Even without chaining together a massive combo or narrowly evading certain death, the tiny custom clicks and blips that emit when rotating and putting down a piece are rife with subtle bits of tactile feedback, adding texture to the simple and age-old brick-based puzzle genre. This attention to detail ripples out from those smaller touches and has been the special flair that has made Lumines more than a Tetris clone the ill-informed might peg it as. Lumines Arise sits near the apex of this pop music-powered puzzle game philosophy and is an experience that’s dazzling for the fingers, eyes, and brain.
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“Experience” is an apt descriptor because it’s impossible to separate Arise’s presentation from how intricately it’s linked to the moment-to-moment block dropping. Of course, said mechanics are wonderfully accessible, yet incredibly deep.
Rating: 4/5
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Core block-dropping gameplay remains accessible, deep, and endlessly replayable | Level transitions are jarring and slow down the pacing |
| New Burst mechanic is both useful for getting out of a jam and racking up higher scores | |
| Stages, while unrelated to one another, are often vibrant and visually appealing | |
| Soundtrack contains a variety of styles, and its best songs are fantastic |
Lumines Arise‘s Brilliant Block-Dropping Mechanics Remain Deep Yet Approachable
Having to put together squares of alike colors is straightforward and gets more complex when thinking up all the ways to most efficiently drop its set of unique two-by-two tile grids before the BPM-dependent timeline rolls by to turn the colored squares into points. Chain blocks that wipe out every similarly tinted square it’s touching allow for even greater combos for those who can think strategically at a moment’s notice. The new time-stopping Burst mechanic that revolves around quickly crafting the biggest square possible builds on this system by yielding juicier combo potential as well as a reprieve for those on the verge of defeat; a multifaceted addition that naturally fits within Lumines’ established and tightly honed foundation.
Lumines Arise, smartly, doesn’t tear down those timeless fundamentals. It only highlights the aforementioned experiential aspects that are afforded to it by stronger hardware and, presumably, Enhance Games’ learnings after making the coolest Tetris game, Tetris Effect. Every stage in Arise is more involved and complicated, supporting lavish effects that best what past Lumines games have achieved. For example, there’s dueling elemental snakes, a neon-rich city with a small cat hopping around the playfield, a level where each square flips between various fruits and vegetables, and one where hatching eggs gives life to small birds that roam around the block pit.
Lumines Arise‘s Stage Design Is the Best in the Series
Admittedly, the puzzle gameplay is spellbinding enough to make these often-elaborate backgrounds harder to discern in the moment — these stages could be all set to gruesome snuff films and it would take a while to notice — but they still play their part in building the game’s all-important aura. They don’t directly influence the gameplay, per se, but said aura is crucial for a game like this that’s not trying to be just a regular puzzler.
These tertiary aspects from the sound effects that change from level to level to the themes of the backgrounds and blocks are all carefully selected to evoke a certain tone. It’s a missed opportunity to have levels that don’t naturally lead to one another and songs that don’t build toward a coherent overall theme or say something more incisive — the opening and closing track about humanity is only a surface-level bop since it isn’t supported by other thematically similar songs — but they yield visual variety and ebb and flow enough to create a range of different tempos.
The soothing blues and whites of the Greek stage contrast nicely with the bombastic EDM that blares when the two chameleons vibe off reptilian molly and try to bring the house down. Most of the slow songs are not engaging and it could always use more lizard-focused party jams, but the peaks and valleys are necessary for proper pacing and the best songs are earworms worth the buildup.
Lumines Arise‘s Level Transitions Break the All-Important Flow
The audio, visuals, and rhythmic controller pulses work in tandem to make Arise an enrapturing puzzle game that’s even harder to look away from. Its immersive qualities are further boosted in VR, which doesn’t fundamentally change the experience yet benefits from the reclusive qualities of strapping on a headset that eliminates outside distractions. It’s like being in a sensory deprivation chamber that’s also holding a private rave.
A laser-guided focus on keeping players in a trance makes Arise’s approach to level transitions all the stranger. Bucking common sense and the trend set by past installments, Arise stops and pulls out after every stage, leading to about a 10-second break in the action every minute or two. It’s a bizarre and harmful decision that forcefully disrupts the spell it has tirelessly worked to cast in all its other avenues. Past Lumines titles benefited from seamless transitions and the nonstop onslaught of stages, so completely upending that mesmerizing flow unnecessarily holds Arise back.
Even with persistent record scratches, Lumines Arise remains a beautiful album. Stages, while lacking a greater purpose, have more detailed and impressive effects and are often set to fitting tracks that cover a whole variety of genres from hip hop to house. Everything coalesces around its signature block-matching gameplay that’s infinitely replayable like the greats it was inspired by. Arise is a familiar beat in many respects, but one that has retained its hypnotic rhythm and hasn’t lost an ounce of its soul.
A PS5 copy of Lumines Arise was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.
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