Lumines Supernova (PS3)

[Arwin]

So, on to my fourth Lumines game - after the two PSP ones and the Xbox Live one, I still like the game enough to go for the PS3 one.

My biggest curiosity for this version was what Time Trial scores I could get, since I like the sixaxis' d-pad the best of all platforms so far. After a bit of practice, tonight I managed to break most of my PSP highscores by a fair margin, and with some scores I actually entered the global top 100 for that time trial (the 300 second one for instance), so not too bad. And I got my first (I think ever) SS ranking, on the 600 mode.

Still love the game, though I agree with Eurogamer that after this many releases they could have upped the ante a bit with some nicer high-score integration features (e.g. showing best scores of your friends list on the game select screen or even in-game like LittleBigPlanet ... ). And the dig-down mode just doesn't really click with me. But there's a tonne of new skins which have some new graphical tricks, and some of them look really nice.

Here are my current time trial scores ...

The Trophies in this version are very hard to get by the way, much harder than on Live - and a lot more work too.

Anyone else playing this?

 

[tha_con]

I'm playing it, and now, having seen your time trial scores, I am content with the face that I am not nearly skilled enough to contend with some of the worlds best. Extremely impressive stuff man, I barely managed to break 50 points on the 60 second time trial.

You've succeeded in making me feel terrible about this game

 

[Sigfried1977]

Lumines is such a freakin' hard puzzler. My top score is like 130.000, lol. The leaderboard highscores on the other hand are just insane. Nice presentation, though. Love the Mario inspired 8 bit skin.

 

[itch]

This game is great, I just wish you could save the current game and continue later. It is great on the psp because I can play for a bit and put the thing to sleep to pick up later. I think I would play it more on the ps3 if I could do the same.

 

[Arwin]

Yeah, but that's why I always play time-trials. The regular game just goes on forever (if you don't suck too much) and takes too long, not unlike the original Tetris, though with more variation at least . I tend to play the main game once for either difficulty and commit suicide after my first loop. Bleh.

 

[tha_con]

What is the trick to high scores in time trials though? I don't understand how the point system works, and it seems I'm just going insane trying to match up as many colors as possible and waiting for my special block to get rid of massive amounts of one color, hoping it will create a big chain.

Advice?

 

[Arwin]

Simple maths - you get one 'clear' for with four small blocks of one color in one square. If you add two colored blocks on top of that square, you get 2 cleared blocks while using only six squares. Larger structures can yield higher efficiency (depending on their shapes).

Combining this efficiency with timing (build structures in front of / behind the timeline that moves from left to right) and speed is what gives you the higher scores.

For me this meant that scoring better forced me to play slower first, thinking more carefully about how to spread the blocks so that I could get a high efficiency at each time-sweep, and once I improved my efficiency, learn to do that fast enough to get higher scores.

Lot of fun

 

[tha_con]

I get it, so if I get one point for 1 cleared block, I get 2 for 2 cleared blocks using only 6 squares.

Do combo's yield any additional points? Say, if I get rid of 1 cleared block, and when it's gone, another forms as a result...is there any incentive to try to string together things like that?

 

[Arwin]

I get it, so if I get one point for 1 cleared block, I get 2 for 2 cleared blocks using only 6 squares.

Do combo's yield any additional points? Say, if I get rid of 1 cleared block, and when it's gone, another forms as a result...is there any incentive to try to string together things like that?

Nope. In fact, that's not considered a combo in this game. The only thing that matters here is clearing as many blocks at once ... you can see in the Database in the top level menu, then first option on the left what kind of thing is recorded / awarded by the game (I like that you get grades for various achievements, it's a more advanced type of trophy/achievement than the systems that PSN/Live employ).

 

[tha_con]

Cool man, that explains a LOT. I was trying way too hard to just make combos and stuff, thinking that would add to my score.

Last question (I swear). Does that special block that will eliminate all connecting blocks of a certain color have any significance in Time Trial? i.e. will getting rid of a lot of block give me points?

 

[Arwin]

No - in fact, unless it clears up a mess you accidentally created, it can do more harm than good. If you want to clear a lot of blocks at once, you'll need blocks to clear first. If one of those special blocks clears everything of a certain color, you'll lose scoring opportunities. The one strategy you could use them for that I haven't experimented with is to create a complex structure which you clean up using the special block in such a manner that all the remaining blocks form a giant cluster ... But intuitively I feel that this strategy won't be as efficient as any other strategy, because you'll have to waste opportunities to score points with one color.
These special blocks are definitely better suited for the single player campaign, generally.