During the launch of Sony’s PSP in 2005, acclaimed Japanese video game producer Tetsuya Mizuguchi stood at the forefront of the PSP’s success with his widely praised PSP puzzle game known as Lumines. It brought immensely addictive gameplay, not unlike Tetris did back in the good ‘ole days. Even now, I still play Lumines regularly and as most of you probably were, I was thrilled when I first heard that it was coming to the Xbox 360. But it’s not all sunshine and roses. Lumines Live! has some dirty secret costs that should have been communicated better.

Lumines Live! is a pretty pricey affair; the base pack is just as expensive as the most expensive Arcade game out there, Bankshot Billiards 2 (1200MP), and that doesn’t even unlock the whole game. While the PSP version has 40 skins, the base pack only gives you 12. And it gets even worse. For that 1200MP (or $14.99) you only get the Challenge mode, Time Attack mode (with a save-replay option) and the multiplayer modes (both Live and local). The rest of the game remains exactly the same as the demo. You can still only play 5 puzzle missions, one Vs. CPU match and so on.

Challenge mode is the heart of the game though. It allows you to play through the game’s skins in order until you fill the screen. This is where you play the long marathon sessions Lumines is known for; this is where you get your high score. It stores your own personal high score which you can then compare on the leaderboards. The game keeps track of the weekly high scores, the all time high scores, the high scores on your friends list and so on. The only problem is that the friends list leaderboard isn’t sorted by score and it’s hard to tell who has the highest score of the list. This could be easily fixed with a simple patch though.

It’s hard to give a good review of the rest of the modes since they’re currently unavailable. After you play 5 puzzles in Puzzle mode or 1 match against the CPU the game prompts you to buy an add-on pack. It’s currently unknown how expensive these packs are going to be, but if the Advanced Challenge pack (which offers another 20 skins and costs 600MP) is any indication then they’re bound to be expensive. Too expensive. The PSP game only costs $19.99 at the moment and that has all of those modes and more skins. Besides, Lumines II for PSP is due this November and that’s going to have over 200 skins, all the modes and more; a Battle mode and an option to modify the level designs. And even if you don’t own a PSP, Lumines Plus is coming to the PS2 soon for a friendly price of $29.99 and that has all the Lumines 1 stuff and some extras too.

So, is Lumines Live! completely worthless? I think not. It’s still as addictive as ever and if you only own an Xbox 360, and no other systems with Lumines, then I highly recommend you give it a try. It has stunning visuals (for a puzzle game), it has full 5.1 sounds and attacking the leaderboards alone are bound to offer a butt load of fun. Be wary of the secret costs though, I can’t express enough that those are a very sneaky way of robbing you out of your hard earned cash. A lot of people fell for it, a lot of people are bound to fall for it and it’s just a shitty thing to do on MS’s part. It’s a true shame that they picked Lumines Live! to try out this approach on DLC, Lumines deserves better.

Final Score - 7 out of 10 (How do we rate games?)