Lumines

Looking through my modest library of PSP titles, the game that gets the most play is probably Lumines.

To think: I sat on the fence for a long time before deciding to try it. As a professed Tetris nerd, this new-fangled puzzle game came across as all shiny graphics, catchy tunes and pretensiously complicated. Indeed, it was only because I found a used copy of the game for cheap that I have mine at all.

But now? I guess you could say I'm positively addicted to it.

When you cut through the fat -- the modernish design conceit, the techno-driven tunes, the thousand and one things happening in the background skins that will give attention deficit disorder a run for its money -- what Lumines has to offer is quite ingenious. In Tetris, the goal is to clear lines created out of blocks made up of at most four squares. The objective in Lumines, however, is to use 2x2 blocks to clear like-colored 2x2 squares. And the more the merrier: whereas the eponymous Tetris allows a player to clear four lines at once in that game, a player can create as many such squares as possible before a relentless timeline runs its course onscreen to clear them.

It's not nearly as complicated as it looks or sounds, and once one overcomes the game's learning curve it's a worthy puzzle game to obsess over. On my first go at it, I mistakenly thought that I could easily apply some of the gameplay principles I'd learned from Tetris and be reasonably good at Lumines. I was wrong (and obviously, an idiot). Yet that misstep helped put into perspective the game's underlying logic. Now? I understand the possibilities that each differently configured 2x2 block represents. I've learned why one has to urgently drop blocks to maximize combos from the approaching timeline. And I better appreciate how the speed at which the timeline passes -- in sync with the music of the background skin -- can make or break a playthrough.

What can I say? I'm hooked.

Recently I picked up a copy of Lumines II, which for all intents and purposes is just a jazzed up version of the first installment. It has new skins, sleeker versions of some older ones, and a soundtrack featuring a variety of established recording artists. While there's something to be said for updating the game (a couple of ugly skins notwithstanding), the bells and whistles felt more like a gimmick than anything else. I doubt that music videos playing in the background enhance the Lumines experience, nor do fancier skins make the game any better.

Then again, I could be wrong. My copy of Lumines II was pre-owned, just like that copy of its predecessor I purchased after much hemming and hawing. And we now know how that turned out.