Game:

Counter-Strike: Source (2004)

Duration: 2:50

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3

I think that it would be fair to say that the number one factor in this game keeping my interest in this game is the sheer variety of aural (and to a lesser extent, visual) entertainment that it provides. It simply wouldn't be the same if it had more generic and static sound effects or even just background music without variation. I find myself continually coming back to it for the experience of progressing from one procedurally-generated emergent musical theme to the next.

Of course, it doesn't hurt its case at all that it happens to present a rather unique and intriguing set of clear conditions and thus an engaging field of play that evolves as a result of these patterns.

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Challenge Mode
Skin 03: Round About

As a note, I'm writing the skin names as best I can according to what they refer to themselves as on stylized little title cards. So it's really "Round About" and not actually "Roundabout" as near as I can tell. If anybody out there actually knows more about the particulars of Lumines than I do (which wouldn't be hard, but I also don't know how terribly commonplace such knowledge would be), feel free to set me straight.

Anyway, Lumines is like many other action-puzzle and falling-shape games in that quick recognition of patterns is paramount to successfully clearing out the game pieces faster than they can descend upon you. Part of this is tied in with recognizing patterns in how the pieces you're moving around not only look when placed into the existing matrix of tiles, but also how the two halves of the square you're dropping will look when it gets split across an uneven landing surface as well as how any clears you trigger will affect the landscape.

This might sound trivial and maybe even a little pedantic, but it's also not something you can exactly take for granted. In general, you'll want to group pieces into squares and remember formations on both the playing field and the possible pieces you'll be controlling that will lead to more clears than leftovers...which is not nearly as trivial as it might sound.

The other skill that you'll want to build is laying out your non-clearing tiles such that they maintain continuously contiguous lines of like-colored pieces in the play matrix, because of the lucrative potential represented in applying the special piece clears, and most importantly how the resulting formation will fall into quite a large number of natural clears as a result of many like-colored pieces slamming together at once.

While it makes for a very impressive display, it's also very easy to mess up in a number of ways, leaving you with a large mass of deliberately unmatched pieces to tackle or attempt to salvage the scheme, which can leave you in even hotter water than you originally were.

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