10/10
Lumines II playable demo is just plain fun... the whole game is awesome!

Give me tetris anyday
Boring, overrated puzzle dribble

Lumines II
The first Lumine games, as a PlayStation Portable (PSP) launch title, revolutionised the block-rotating puzzle genre reminiscent of Tetris by combining the rotation of Tetris-like blocks with addictive, hypnotic music. For the uninitiated, you rotate square clusters of four blocks around. Each cluster can have either all of the same-colored blocks, or with another color in the mix. The key to eliminating these blocks is to form square clusters of the same color, highlighting them and setting them up to be cleared. A vertical line called the timeline will sweep across the playing field, clearing these highlighted clusters. The remaining blocks will fall towards the bottom, creating a potential for huge combos, one after another. If these blocks are not cleared however, they will pile up on the screen, and the game ends when you are unable to lay a block on the playing field.

A large part of Lumines' appeal is how it blends music with the gameplay - pacing the speed of both the timeline and dropping blocks to the beat of the tune, and giving audio cues whenever you clear blocks. This gives you an illusion that you are in control of the music, remixing it while playing a puzzle game. The whole package of music, color theme and background is called a skin, and Lumines II contains over 50 different skins to work through, with a sequencer mode that allows you to create new skins to share.

New features in Lumines II include the sequencer mode and a skin edit mode allowing you to create your own custom playlist of skins. There is also a mission mode, where you are tasked with simple goals like clearing all the blocks in one fell swoop. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, and Lumines II follows this winning formula to a T, bringing back more of the block-rotating madness which made the first game a roaring success. Highly recommended for puzzle fans.