Lumines Remastered has boogied onto PC
Back with another one of those block-droppin' beats
Q Entertainment's 2004 musical puzzler Lumines is back with another one of those block-droppin' beats as Lumines Remastered, a remake of the original PSP game. It was great then and it's still basically the same, only now in fancy modern HD-o-vision. Drop coloured blocks onto a grid to form matches and score mega-points, grooving to tunes which also drive the pace of the puzzling: a good time. Oh, and you could hook up a load of controllers and duct tape them to your body to buzz merrily to the beat.
So, Lumines! Blocks are dropping, oh no. But don't worry, as is their wont, blocks will vanish if they touch enough blocks of the same colour. Lumines puts a neat twist on this by only clearing matches when they're touched by a tracker line which sweeps from left to right, a bar which is paced to match the music. Faster BPM, faster bar, less time to make matches. Slower BPM, slower bar, more risk that the grid will fill up and game over. And some of the tunes are rad as heck.
That's the Lumines formula, and Remastered whacks that into the modern high-resolution world with 4K support and new shinies. Though I'm seeing some complaints that it doesn't play nicely with 144Hz monitors, making blocks drop extra-fast - the billionaires amongst you will want to crank down to 60. Lumines has been on PC before, but this version seems far better.
Remastered also supports syncing multiple controllers to, and I quote, "feel the bass across your body." Y'know, like the neck massager Trance Vibrator (workplace warning there, obvs) for Rez. Speaking of, if you like musical wonders, Rez is on PC these days.
Lumines Remastered is out now on Steam for £10/€15/$15. Folks who buy within its first two weeks get some wallpapers and soundtrack songs thrown in too.