Each transition fundamentally changes the pace and the atmosphere, but there seems to be some kind of mysterious internal logic to the flow of the main campaign, too. ![]() There are very few duds overall, in fact, and if the musical line-up is a little more Eurocentric than usual, it also manages to be more harmoniously varied. For the time being, though, I'm a huge fan of Played-A-Live, by Safri Duo - I hate the drums, but I love the giant angry robot who's constantly taking on helicopters - and Traces of the Past, by Makoto Asai, which is like the old Palace Video logo brought to life as a wonderfully creepy Halloween-'em-up filled with leering pumpkins and pointy spires. Standouts? Like your favourite songs on an album (apologies, I'm getting on a bit and I still think in the music industry's equivalent of old money) these tend to change every few hours. Visually, they light up the unit's lavish 5" screen like nothing else - and when it comes to track choices, they're amongst the best the series has seen to date, too. So when you try to work out what's new for Electronic Symphony, Lumines' first appearance on the Vita, the new skins are the most obvious starting point. With a game that puts music and art design right at the heart of the experience, providing a handful of new sights and sounds has meant that Q can release a series of entirely agreeable follow-ups without ever having to risk ruining everything by tampering with the crucial elements of the concept. It gives players something new to think about every few minutes while they stoically sort blocks and arrange colours - and skins have also been a bit of a boon when it comes to sequels. Lumines' ever-changing audiovisual backdrops offer a smart way of keeping things fresh, while also allowing the game's developers the opportunity to alter the pace of the drops and the speed of the sweeping timeline. That's probably where the skins came from. ![]() By the time you're any good at Q Entertainment's stylish puzzler, you're going to be able to play it for hours at a time off the back of a single life. Ask any falling-block fan and they'll tell you that Tetris is a sprint while Lumines is a marathon. ![]() One of the biggest differences, however, is actually structural. The former's purely about spatial sense, for starters, while the latter piles rhythmic elements and colour-matching on top. For two games that are forever being lumped together, there's plenty of mechanical variation separating Tetris and Lumines.
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