LUMINES FOR THE Playstation Portable; a fresh new look and feel for all those folks missing their daily dose of puzzle mania. As a puzzle game, it breathes new life and depth into an old genre for a new generation of handhelds and their users. In itself, the game involves moving multi-coloured blocks around, Tetris-style, by trying to match four in a set, making the blocks disappear. As you progress in level, the blocks come in faster and in more obscure patterns. Lumines has a number of different modes to keep the game interesting. It also sports a two player vs mode over the PSP's wireless connection.

Lumines' clever use of ever changing bricks, wallpapers and music keep you interested in what's happening on the screen, keeping tedium at bay, even after long sessions of furious button mashing to keep those pesky bricks in check. Lumines' graphics and menu screens are lively and easy to navigate, giving the game a polished feel that only comes from a well thought out title. Controls are simple and intuitive, allowing you to manipulate the blocks on screen with ease.

Single-player modes include a free form challenge mode where you can unlock new skins to play with, new music to play to and the ability to work on a new high score. Lumines also sports a single skin mode where you can enjoy the fruits of your furious labour in challenge mode and time trial modes.

The Time Trial mode pits you against time as you try to eliminate as many blocks as possible within a number of time frame options. A welcome addition to Lumines is player vs. computer mode or challenge mode, where you can practice for your multi-player matches. This involves the player racing to eliminate bricks from his area before the computer does the same. Just to make it interesting, your designated area to drop bricks is dictated by how well you do against the computer: if you eliminate more bricks than the computer, your area enlarges and the opposite also happens, resulting in a furious tug of war between the two sides.

Multiplayer on Lumines is simple and bug free with no lag that is sometimes present in some of the other PSP Wi-Fi titles. Multiplayer is the same as the challenge mode except you and a friend are facing off against each other over the ad hoc mode available to PSP users.

Lumines is a game that may take some time to learn but a fair bit longer to master. As you progress, gameplay becomes faster and more complex with harder variations of blocks dropping more frequently. The only problem we had with Lumines was a lack of a save aspect on the free-form mode. After about 30 minutes of play, it becomes very difficult to move to the next level, especially after each mistake. If you make a mistake, you have to begin from the first stage again which can be a bit frustrating. That aside, Lumines proves to be a welcome addition to the PSP library.