For the lazy - Meteos is very good, and easily worth the purchase if you enjoy puzzle games. One of the better entries in the genre from recent years.
For the interested -
I'm not prepared to make a Lumines vs. Meteos judgement yet, but I can safely say that Meteos is much more full-featured. There's many more options for play. "Star Trip" is like a 1P adventure where you clear several "planets" to get to the end, and there are multiple types of star trips as well.
Then there's a timed option, where you do as well as you can for 2 minutes or 5 minutes, or clear 100 meteos or 1000 meteos as fast as you can.
There's also an endless mode for each planet, and as the planets vary wildly in terms of gravity (the basis of how the game plays), its not merely getting a different score for each skin or something. You'll have really different high scores, for some of the planets.
Lastly, I really dig how the game unlocks things for you. As you clear Meteos' off the top of the screen, they're added to your total. There are a ton of different types, some more rare than others. So like, after an hour of playing, you might have 250 iron in your stock, 200 H20, 30 glow, and maybe only 1 "soul" meteos. These are then used to "make" new planets, items, rare metals, or sounds/songs. So a planet that's made with just common shit could be made after almost no playing, but some will be hard to save up and make. In 90 minutes of playing I got ONE soul meteos, and it alone made a planet. I wouldn't be surprised if there were some that required a lot of rare stuff to make, later on.
The game is option rich, as well. You can set the game for a rightie or a leftie, you can set what items/weapons you want to appear. Soundtest and stats are available from the start. Stats isn't as comprehensive as a game like melee, but its still cool. Counts power-ons, on time, game time, # of games, # of total blocks cleared, launched, etc.
-You can send a meteos demo to another DS owner.
-4 players can play with one game card.
Lastly, in my opinion the music is really, really excellent. There are NO licensed tracks, so you can't expect anything as cool as I hear music in my soul or lights or anything like that, but the best Meteos tracks easily match up to the best Lumines original tracks. The title screen music is especially (surprisingly) epic.
Downsides -
The meteos are small, and I've died thanks to grabbing the wrong one or putting one in the wrong spot multiple times, after only playing a couple hours. In 1P its frustrating, but in multiplayer its gonna be a major bitch, I can already tell.
The scratching trick still works - sometimes. When the shit has hit the fan and I've tried it, its worked a little over half the time.
For the interested -
I'm not prepared to make a Lumines vs. Meteos judgement yet, but I can safely say that Meteos is much more full-featured. There's many more options for play. "Star Trip" is like a 1P adventure where you clear several "planets" to get to the end, and there are multiple types of star trips as well.
Then there's a timed option, where you do as well as you can for 2 minutes or 5 minutes, or clear 100 meteos or 1000 meteos as fast as you can.
There's also an endless mode for each planet, and as the planets vary wildly in terms of gravity (the basis of how the game plays), its not merely getting a different score for each skin or something. You'll have really different high scores, for some of the planets.
Lastly, I really dig how the game unlocks things for you. As you clear Meteos' off the top of the screen, they're added to your total. There are a ton of different types, some more rare than others. So like, after an hour of playing, you might have 250 iron in your stock, 200 H20, 30 glow, and maybe only 1 "soul" meteos. These are then used to "make" new planets, items, rare metals, or sounds/songs. So a planet that's made with just common shit could be made after almost no playing, but some will be hard to save up and make. In 90 minutes of playing I got ONE soul meteos, and it alone made a planet. I wouldn't be surprised if there were some that required a lot of rare stuff to make, later on.
The game is option rich, as well. You can set the game for a rightie or a leftie, you can set what items/weapons you want to appear. Soundtest and stats are available from the start. Stats isn't as comprehensive as a game like melee, but its still cool. Counts power-ons, on time, game time, # of games, # of total blocks cleared, launched, etc.
-You can send a meteos demo to another DS owner.
-4 players can play with one game card.
Lastly, in my opinion the music is really, really excellent. There are NO licensed tracks, so you can't expect anything as cool as I hear music in my soul or lights or anything like that, but the best Meteos tracks easily match up to the best Lumines original tracks. The title screen music is especially (surprisingly) epic.
Downsides -
The meteos are small, and I've died thanks to grabbing the wrong one or putting one in the wrong spot multiple times, after only playing a couple hours. In 1P its frustrating, but in multiplayer its gonna be a major bitch, I can already tell.
The scratching trick still works - sometimes. When the shit has hit the fan and I've tried it, its worked a little over half the time.
Anyone know a good import site that could deliver it within 2 weeks?
It's a lot like if Retro had added dual analouge to Prime afterall, just to show the complainers why the game wasn't designed that way in the first place.