Saturday, 4 April 2020

Gaming the Pandemic - Day 1: Luminees II (PSP)


Trying to look on the bright side of being stuck at home for the next 3 weeks (minimum) I've decide to attack (at least) one game from my 645 game backlog every day.

I'm not planning on completing them, just playing them for long enough to know:
A) What they're all about.
B) If they're good enough to continue playing ASAP

I keep a spreadsheet of all my games and have half-arse-coded a randomiser button into it to select which game I will play...

So. Lockdown day one. I hit the button and it selected...

Luminees II on the PSP.


I don't think there can many people who own a PSP and not a copy of at least one of the Luminees games - I own both of them but have never played either - until today.

Firstly, the music is extraordinary. Usually when people talk about great music in games they lean towards orchestral melodrama or chip tune bounciness. I was relieved that the music here is neither; instead offering industrial electronica the likes of which I've not really heard in a game since Rez.

When I stopped playing I was still unsure that I had the mechanics entirely down. Simply to play, hard to master is one of the biggest cliches in the medium but it's very apt here, and, as with so many block based puzzle games, it has to compete with decades of Tetris reflexes and muscle-memory - the unlearning of which will take some doing.

I've left it in my PSP with the battery charging so I can come back for more, so I consider that an unqualified success - and I'll be keeping my eye out for a sale on the 'Remastered' edition on Switch.


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