There’s one particularly hard puzzle game in Lumines II. It’s nothing to do with the create-blocks-offour tones of the main game, it’s not found in any of the menus and it’s not listed on the back of the box. It’s an old classic called Spot The Difference. What is the difference between Lumines II and its predecessor? Fingers-on-chins time folks. You only have four beats to answer the question. Whoops! Too late!

The answer is easy. The big (or if you’re being cynical, the only) difference is that real world music has crawled out of Q Entertainment’s record collection and into Lumines II, so you now have the likes of bigboned Missy Elliot, surfer idiots Hoobastank and wrinkly New Order keeping you company as you create chains of four blocks. The good news is that Gwen Stefani’s wail and Ken Ishii’s bleeps punctuating this sequel are complimenting the J-Pop ambience of Lumines rather than replacing it. The music video backgrounds are also chopped up and edited in the style of Lumines, so it feels fresh and relevant rather than a lazy MTV2 background to the puzzling.

Otherwise, it’s still Lumines, regardless of what the number in the title tells you. A few new modes here, a slicker front-end there, no actual change to the gameplay itself. This is fine because the core puzzling sparkles so brightly, even the slightest alteration could dull its unique shine. Blocks of four slowly tumble down the screen and you have to arrange them so you have blocks of four in one of the two colours available. Really, that’s it. No power-ups, no further hidden techniques, just pure puzzling as you work to the scrolling beat bar which clears ‘grouped’ blocks as it passes through them. This is chic music and smart visuals coming together, this is Tetris in a disco, this is just a damn good puzzle game.

So the less things change, the more they stay the same. Not really surprising given that there was never that much room for improvement anyway, given the near flawless execution of the original Lumines, but still a tad disappointing nonetheless. This sequel is essentially Lumines with Missy Elliot’s burger face bouncing around in the background. Well, probably a bit sexier than we made it sound at any rate.

Ryan King