Crack Live hits the xbox live marketplace (lumines)

Lumines hit xbox live this week and all I can say is it's every bit as addictive as the psp version.

Playable in 720p resolution and 5.1 surround sound, lumines is amazing to see and hear beyond the tiny psp screen and headphones.

As most of you know though, there are some MAJOR negatives for this release due to the fact that the game is not downloadable in a single shot, but is spread over around 5+ seperate downloads, making it by far the most expensive xbla game yet. These seperate bits are as follows:

1.) Base pack - 1200 points - this is the core of the game and it MUST be purchased to play. You get leader boards, 12 skins to play with in challenge/skin edit mode, 1 vs computer mode stage, 5 puzzle and 5 mission levels, multiplayer (normal or online with Live), and time attack mode

2.) Advanced pack - 600 points - Offers an additional 22 skins and the advanced leader board

3.) Artist pack - Price unknown (likely ~300-600 points) - This will add an undisclosed (as far as I know) number of music video skins for challenge mode, including 'sorry' from madonna - Not yet released

4.) Puzzle/Mission pack - 400 points - This will add 50 puzzle and 50 mission levels to mission and puzzle mode - Not yet released

5.) VS computer pack - 300 points - Offers 11 additional computer vs matches and associated skins - Not released yet

There is also talk of additional level packs being released at a later date, though no concrete details are released that I'm aware of.

At the moment, it looks like for the total game, it will cost ~3100 points!!! In other words, it's going to cost around 3 MS points cards to get everything once the additional packs are released in upcoming months. That works out to about 60$ CDN for the ms cards

So, is it worth the cost? In many ways I'd say it's too expensive for a game that I payed less for on the psp. At the same time though, the xbla version has some great advantages. You get better sound, can play it on a much bigger screen, can play multiplayer on 1 system, and you will be getting the music video skins (hopefully they will include the 'lights' video as a skin ( ) ). Personally I don't get why they didn't just release the game as a new xbox 360 game with all the content on 1 disk in stores.


Essentially I would say try the demo. If you get hooked on it, then I would say consider buying the points to get the full game content. If necessary, skip the parts you don't care about when they come out. If you're like me and have been hooked on the game since the psp release, chances are you'll be more inclined to pick it up than those who haven't tried it before.

Look at the purchase of the game as if you were going into the store and picking up a new game. Ask yourself if you would purchase the game at full price in a store if it were sitting beside chrome hounds or other x360 games. For me, it's worth the cost. I loved the original lumines, and the added content and advantages of playing in 5.1 in high def are major selling points for me.


Ultimately, it won't be for everyone, and not even for all fans of the original, but I look forward to the future expansions on the game.

fuck that MS already rips you off bad enough for xbl games, they should have a system where you can earn points through your gamer score, anything to make the marketplace worth it.

I crushed the achievements in that game, too easy. I had been training on the PSP for about two months in preparation and it took less then 3 hours of play time to get them all.


Other wise it’s a good game, just wish the bar was higher on the some of the achievements to give me a little more to work for.

So, what you're saying is that they should give it to you for free?


Oh-kay, good luck with that one! Party on!

The laws of Economics phoned, they said to get a clue.

Actually it's not entirely MS's fault for this game being so expensive.

MS is apparently imposing a 50MB maximum for all xbox live arcade downloads. Hence, since lumines is more than that (even on the psp), the game had to be split into multiple downloads in order to get the content to the player at home. From what I understand though, it's the game's publisher that determines the point price for each of these downloads. It was actually Q? entertainment that determined the cost of each of the parts.

Q? could have actually set the cost a lot lower on each peice, though the had no choice but to have the game broken into multiple peices.

The core pack should have remained the most expensive since not everyone will download the rest of the packs, and they do need to make some money off of the game for it to be a viable option to put it onto live. I think it should have been more around 800 or less though, since UMK3 which is a full game came out at 800 points, and Hyper Street Fighter II came out at 500.

The additional packs could have been much less expensive though. Say 200-300 for the advance pack (it's got a fair amount of content in this pack, so the combination of content and liscencing costs for music justifies a higher price than other packs), 100 for the puzzle/mission (no new skins or music I don't think, just some puzzle levels), and 100 for vs cpu (it's only 11 levels).

The only other expensive pack I could see would be the music video skins. They aren't really necessary to the game, and would be more for the hardcore music fan or lumines player. The increased cost would be more for the liscencing fees of the videos than anything, so the cost would naturally be fairly high. This pack would therefore likely be reasonably priced around 300-500 points

All that said though, the cost of the full lumines game should have come to less than 2000 points for everything. Unfortunately Q? entertainment decided to screw with the prices, which is unfortunate since more people would be inclined to try this great game at a cheaper price.