Game:

Lumines: Puzzle Fusion (2004)

Duration: 3:02

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7

Now we switch gears entirely to a new mode... mostly because I'm not quite dedicated enough to play another straight forty minutes of Challenge Mode just to pick up where I left off. I mean, I will. It's a great mode and the game is interesting enough... I just need some variety in my diet. (And thus the reason why I don't actually improve, much less excel in any one particular area in the long run.)

Anyway, this is the Vs. CPU mode, wherein the central processing unit of your game system comes to life and demands satisfaction in a straight fistfight for all the heck you've put it through making it watch you play Lumines solo while it merely keeps score and changes the tunes. Well, it can demand whatever it likes, but the best it can do is beat you at your own game, which it can and will.

The rules are somewhat adjusted to accommodate a head-to-head style of play, but the basics of "complete the square, delete panels" remains the same. Both players will take to the same game field divided down the center, each able to exert influence over their pieces within their color-coded (tinged red for P1, blue for P2) domains and let loose to play as usual.

However, you play this time not for score but to expand your playing field. With each passing of the clear line, the game will count up the number of clears made by each player as can be noted in the upper corners. Whichever side has the higher count at the end of a pass will absorb the nearest column of the opposing play field. In the event of a tie, the boundary between the two remains where it is.

As the field shrinks for one player, it becomes harder to engineer massive clears and the pieces will pile up faster than usual if they're dropped in closer and closer horizontal proximity until finally the top of the play area is filled up. On the flip side, doing well early will give you more and more space to stretch out in and engineer more impressive clears, making this game's versus play highly momentum-based. That's not to say that a comeback won't be possible once you start to fall behind, but it's the early bird that gets the worm and pressure-play is much more highly rewarded than meticulous stack-management.

Vs. CPU mode is a much shorter mode with a selection of its own skins to offer...but you must defeat each opponent in turn in righteous light-and-sound-based combat if you want to have them for your very own. As a bonus, you also unlock additional player icons for your trouble.

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Vs. CPU
Skin 01: Japanese Form

As one might imagine by the title, this skin is quite... well, Japanese in form, for lack of any more appropriate descriptor. You get exactly what it says on the tin. The pace is very laid-back and leisurely and the clear line actually moves at a well below-average pace, although it's not exactly a boon you might be able to take advantage of up front, seeing as how you're only looking at half the normal playing field we're used to.

This slow-tempo start is also ideal for letting you figure out how the mode works and what to expect from things to come, since the game itself won't be explaining anything (that I know of) within its own software confines. The idea would be natural enough without explanation, though... clear lots of stuff, take over the world--erm, I mean playing area, yes, that's what I meant, of course I did.

This being the first opponent, we will naturally find that the game will take things easy on its poor, disadvantaged meatsack of an opponent...but that CPU is patient enough to bide its time and exact sweet, infuriating vengeance later on...

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