E3 06: Lumines II: Puzzle Fusion Hands-On

LOS ANGELES--Lumines II: Puzzle Fusion is being developed for a Q4 2006 release by Q! Entertainment and is being published by Buena Vista Games. The game was playable at the Sony PlayStation Portable booth, and we headed over there for our first hands-on with the game.

As a launch title for the PlayStation Portable, Lumines didn't show off the power of the new handheld console, but it proved to be one of the most critically and commercially successful games in the initial lineup. The sequel is called Lumines II: Puzzle Fusion and is supposedly 80 percent complete at this stage. The only mode available at the booth was the challenge mode, which played exactly as it did in its predecessor. Cubes fall from the top of the screen to the bottom, and are made out of four blocks, which can be one of two colors. By stacking the cubes at the bottom of the screen, the aim is to combine four blocks of the same color, as a line that passes across the screen will make them disappear. If you can make four or more cubes disappear with one line pass, your score will be multiplied, and you can rotate the blocks by using the console's face buttons.

It sounds complicated when you put it down on paper, but it belongs to the same "simple and addictive" genre as Tetris and Columns. In the build that we played, the gameplay was exactly the same as the predecessor, bar a very small improvement in presentation, and new music and backgrounds. A big part of Lumines was its techno-chillout soundrack and the backgrounds that would change as you reached higher and higher scores. Lumines II takes the complexity of the backgrounds up slightly, with the first section featuring a complex video montage with obscure messages such as "everything needs love." We weren't so keen on this addition, as the flashes made it more difficult to concentrate, but things settled down for the second section, with a stark mix of red fire and black background.

The changes in the game that we witnessed are very minor, and Lumines II could easily be mistaken for the first game at first sight. While the gameplay in the first game was nigh-on perfect, we're yet to see what Q! Entertainment can offer in the finished game to make it worth the upgrade.