The Luxor series rises from the ancient tombs once more to take you back to the 80's... wait, what?
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By Andrew Reeves
The last time I played a Luxor game was on the original PSP and I couldn't tell you which one it was exactly because I had borrowed it from a friend after receiving rave reviews only to be disappointed that I could hardly play due to my genetically driven lack of color perception. For those of you who have never played this type of puzzle game before, think Puzzle Bobble meets Centipede, which is quite fun if you can track everything that's moving around. Alas, my impaired vision never really sets me up properly for these titles, so when Luxor Evolved came across my desk I was timid. Luckily for me, either color blindness or A.D.D is a big enough problem among gamers that development houses like MumboJumbo have added other visual clues to the mix like specific shapes within the colored targets. Whichever the case is, I'm truly grateful as Luxor Evolved was really easy to pick up and play. The control sets seem to be well thought out for a touch based game, offering options like the ability to offset the firing mechanism from your finger so you don't run into any occlusion issues and a release-to-fire option which comes in very handy when you get into much faster moving rounds. The graphic design of Luxor Evolved didn't really shine for me until four or five levels in when lots of things began moving around the screen with explosions and powerups bouncing everywhere. To be honest, I originally wasn't all that impressed with the retro-arcade style graphics and felt like it may have been a cop-out to speed up development or something, but as soon as I had my first screen filling event that never dropped a frame I became a fan. Another area that deserves some praise is the techno-infused audio collection that presents itself as a set of static tracks, but definitely has the ability to change speed and overall tone with the current intensity of gameplay. With all of that said, the levels can get pretty repetitive and I'm not sure if it would hold the attention of someone who isn't a fan on the genre for much longer than a few hours.
