Lumines Arise review: "Just as effective as Tetris Effect, block matching to a beat becomes a transcendent experience"

Lumines Arise does for this falling block puzzler as Tetris Effect did for Tetris. Enhance's take on Tetris packed synthetic flair, using pumping music, oodles of particle effects, and pulsating visuals to take the titular idea of the Tetris effect – seeing the falling blocks in your mind and dreams after playing – and to celebrate it as something that connects us through the human experience. And, by gosh, they've done it again. If you love previous Lumines games, this is a luscious release that accomplishes the same task – Lumines Arise is Lumines transcended.

Thanks to playing hours of this unique block puzzler, I can see its own shapes forming when I close my eyes – the Lumines take on the real-life 'tetris effect' (does that make it just 'lumines arise'?'. These endless falling squares aren't just lonely blocks, but chunks of corners yearning to connect before bursting. And what's that? A groove! A beat! Before I know it, I'm breaking it down Lumines style, organizing colors into neat piles before a beat indicator travels from the left side of my brain to the right eliminating the blocks. Far from popping my brain cells, though, I feel charged. Playing Lumines Arise and being on a roll makes me feel like a genius. Until the tempo gets the better of me and I'm drowned in checkerboard distress. At times, the Lumines Arise can feel like anxiety. At others, eureka manifest.

Drop it like it's block

But it's still not quite Tetris. What is? But, with this genre, it's different blocks for different folks. I'm not going to yuk anyone's Col-umns. I myself have been known to battle jetlag by comfort gaming Pokemon Puzzle Challenge on the Game Boy Color until my digits go numb. I'm not totally convinced that's a particularly good game to be honest. I have no idea what the critical consensus is on Pokemon Puzzle Challenge. It's there, and I like to play it. Even more than any other genre, the falling block puzzler often feels like a matter of personal taste.

The difference between Tetris and Lumines is important to remember. Despite coming from the same studio as Tetris Effect, Lumines Arise is a completely different beast, blocky aesthetics aside. That is to say, if you try to play Lumines like Tetris. You will die. Or fail, or whatever happens to the Lumines player when they've gunked up the works good and proper.

Yes, blocks fall down from the top of the screen from a visible queue, but unlike its vertically-stacking peers, Lumines uses a game board that's stretched horizontally, allowing the PSP original to take advantage of the handheld's at-the-time unique widescreen format. Each falling block is a 2x2 cluster mixing together one of the game's two colors (or, rarely, just the one). That doesn't make for a lot of different configurations – two lines of blocks next to each other; and L-shape of one color with a solitary corner brick; the dreaded alternating checkerboard.

Lumines' immediate simplicity belies cruelty. Clearing blocks requires connecting at least 2x2 shapes of them together, bigger connections able to be formed by attaching more pairs or other multiplications. End up with too many disconnected colors, either buried alone or in lines, and you'll quickly drown your game board in junk – panic can rise as you're cut off from salvation.

On the flip side, there's an immense satisfaction to finding order in the chaos, expertly clumping together colors so they all pop at once, clearing one color so that only the other color remains and you can do the same again. Well balanced play means flip-flopping between both, but as Lumines Arise gets faster, and you get too comfortable, mistakes will happen. It's one thing knowing intellectually that if you split a certain block configuration in twain by hanging off an edge, one color will perfectly fall to fill a slot below – but it's another doing it consciously while under pressure.

Further increasing that mounting pressure is the beat itself. Almost like recording software, a line constantly moves across the game board – only clearing primed blocks as it sweeps past them. Unlike something like Tetris clearing a line as soon as it's made, or Puyo, well, popping as soon as a match comes together – in Lumines Arise you must wait. That can make it dicey enough, mere seconds feeling like an eternity as you grasp for whatever space you can, but it can also make you greedy – can you drop more blocks faster to make the most of an already primed bubble in order to earn combo points? The Roman Empire fell in much the same way.

Some accommodations can save your skin in dicey situations. Special connective blocks marked with arrows allow you to chain a strand of connected colors together to pop no matter the shape as long as you just plonk them next to the same type – real life-savers, though rare. Likewise, Burst mode – Lumine's Arise's big new feature – will freeze the beat for a limited amount of time, while also allowing your next color match to push alternate colors temporarily off the screen, letting you pile on the matches for a huge burst (and then giving you plenty of the other color to play with as they all fall back onto the screen afterwards). It's not quite as intuitive as Tetris Effect's Zone power, but Lumines is simply a more complex set of rules, so it tracks.

My little soda pop

Plenty of tutorials and missions teach you how to play Lumines effectively, though it's also a game that you simply get better at through repetition. Lumines Arise's features make this the best way to play, the synesthetic nature of each stage joyously beckoning you into a flow state. At times, these sensory stages can feel overwhelming, especially as they transition from one state to another changing not only background visuals and music but the presentation of the colors themselves.

One stage might have black circles and golden diamonds, and then all of a sudden there are crabs there, and now water is spilling into the level, and then you're matching nuts and squirrels are running around the stage. It can be distracting, but it's part of the fun. Thematically, it connects the idea of creating order from chaos with each puzzling Lumines round to how we do the same that's also part of the real world – whether that's nature simply thriving, or getting sweaty in a thumping nightclub. It's an electric concept that works just as well in Lumines Arise as it does in Tetris Effect.

While I think I prefer Tetris Effect overall, that might be just because I like Tetris more. I'm not sure I'm a fan of reviews that get meta and talk about the experience of the review itself, but there is something inherently difficult about reviewing falling block puzzle games like this one. How much value is there in me reviewing the rule set that is Lumines while reviewing Lumines Arise? With Tetris games, how much do you need to review the rules of Tetris every time compared to how it's presented and tweaked in a particular new entry? Lumines, as a type of a game, has a solid and satisfying set of rules for how it works. Lumines Arise continues this forward, and feels better than ever through tiny tweaks and presentation.

What I can say is, as I'm finishing up this review, I can feel the Lumines Arise effect (does that work?) pulling at my fingers, eager to boot it up for another few rounds of matching blocks and catchy beats draw me deep into a blocky flow state. Lumines Arise is a terrific revitalization of Lumines as a puzzle game, and while my affection for it can rise and fall – each joyous bubble can get pretty big before, inevitably, it has to pop to the beat.

What should you play next? Check out our new games calendar for more!