I have enjoyed many puzzle games across all systems since first being addicted to Tetris. While I find a lot of them fun, I find many of them flawed. There are very few puzzle games that to me fit a certain level of quality that can be found in Tetris. Tetris is to me in a word perfect. It involve skill, it involves thinking, it is challenging, it is easy to pick up and play, and the most important aspect, it does not let you freak out on the control to make up for skill in a last second of desperation. You have to play Tetris with skill and rarely luck. Magical Drop is another game that falls in this category. While it's possible to get lucky, spazzing out on the controls will rarely save you as you need to align things properly in order to continue forward. Tetris Attack/Panel de Pon has a huge fan base, but this game doesn't quite fall into this criteria either, as you can simply go a bit crazy and save yourself quite easily. This leads us to Lumines; based on this criteria, Lumines is in my opinion one of the finest puzzle games ever designed and only second to Tetris.

The object of Lumines is quite simple; arrange 2x2 pieces so that they form a minimum of a 2x2 square or rectangle of the same color. You can then extend this vertically or horizontally by any dimension bigger. You can also create multiple objects from sharing the same resources as long as it meets the minimum requirement. Once you have formed a valid section to be cleared, it will be highlighted. You can continue to build upon this until the "scan line" hits it. The scan line is a vertical line that is always moving from left to right across the screen. Anything that is waiting to be cleared will clear when the line reaches it. Based on this, you can continually build upon and take advantage of the position of the scan line to maximize how much you will clear at once. However, at the same time, if you try to clear something at the wrong time, the scan line will hurt you as it might only clear part of what you were trying to. Mastering the scan line isn't a requirement, but understanding it and taking advantage of it will be beneficial. Another element to understand is how your current piece can shift based on uneven terrain when laying down a piece. Being able to utilize this shifting is much more of a crucial element to the gameplay than taking advantage of the scan line. It can literally take someone from scoring low, to scoring significantly higher when understanding certain basic shifting principles.

Gamers will have a choice of several modes to play. The heart of the game lies within the Challenge Mode which is where you will cycle through skins as you advance in levels. Advancing in level is based on the number of blocks that you clear. Once you have passed five levels, the skin will change. A skin change involves changing the background, the colors of the pieces, the music, and the pace of both your pieces and the scan line. The pace of the scan line and pieces will not always be proportional either so you can have a slow scan line and fast pieces, vice versa, or both being the same. Advancing in skins doesn't always mean things will get faster either. As you play through, there will certainly be skins that will be annoying to you when it mixes up the color scheme and you are not able to process the change. So be prepared. Other modes include single skin mode which involves playing the game with any skin that you have unlocked and in this case as you level up, the pace becomes quicker without any slowing down. So while you may be able to last awhile in Challenge mode, that may not be the case in Single Skin mode. Lumines also has a Puzzle mode which involves you being able to create certain shapes that are given to you within the given amount of time. If you're able to successfully do it, then you will have to create each of the objects twice before time runs out. Finally, the last mode is a Versus mode where you can play against either the computer or against a friend. Here, the screen is divided in half where each player gets a side. The object is to clear as many blocks as fast as you can. You are sharing the same play field so you are also sharing the same scan line. In one full scan, for whoever has cleared the most blocks, the dividing line will shift in favor of that person. Ultimately, you are growing your share of the play field while shrinking theirs in an effort to make it so your opponent can't lay down anymore pieces.

Coming from Tetsuya Mizaguchi, creator of Space Channel 5 and Rez, no review could be complete without touching on the music. Lumines has an excellent soundtrack which is composed of both licensed and original music. Most of the licensed music is from a Japanese artist known as Mondo Grosso. On top of having good music, it's the fact that the music is interactive that puts the icing on the cake. When you place, clear, or rotate pieces, it'll add beats or effects to the music. They've done such a great job with it that many people probably might not notice if it wasn't pointed out to them.

There comes a point where you know the true quality of a puzzle game. That point for me was when I started seeing the game in my head when I wasn't playing it. I could simply be driving somewhere or even just sleeping and would just envision combinations of blocks and how you would utilize certain situations to help you out. Even scarier or maybe just comforting was that I wasn't the only one doing this. Lumines just gets you so mesmerized as you try to learn and get better at the game. Speaking of getting better, that's another aspect of the game that I've noticed not in just myself, but while watching other people play as well. As you play, you just continue to get better. At one point getting just 50,000 points seemed impossible, but each time you play you gradually get better and its almost a steady improvement. This aspect is the key to what keeps you engrossed with the game and coming back for more. Eventually game sessions can easily last an hour and good players will probably play for almost two.

Out of all the games that will be available for the launch of the PSP, and after playing more than the top ten titles out there now, it still comes back that I have been playing Lumines for over three months, and will continue to play it long after the US launch. It is the one game that will stand the test of time and would be my one choice if I had to pick only one title out of the launch. There is so much packed into this puzzle game that even if you get bored with the Challenge Mode, there is still plenty of ways to play the game. Only the limiting fact that the score peaks out at 999,999 is possibly the one flaw in this exceptional game. Do yourself a favor; if you at all like puzzle games, pick up Lumines and find out what likely many people are missing out on.