Lumines Challenge Mode Top 5 Rankings

[marcus]

Seeing as Treble is no longer here (and the Lumines score table hasnt been updated since December), Ill start a thread off for your high scores in challenge mode. It has nothing whatsoever to do with me getting a 5th place worthy score either

844,207 - Mingo
599,441 - Akujiki
534,560 - Tychom
427,706 - Wush
417,562 - michaelmartin_526

[marcus]

Heres Tychoms helpful advice, pulled from the old thread, for reference.

Just some thoughts, hardly crystalised but there you go..


*do* pay attention to the clearing line

While at first it may seem unimportant if you want to progress you do need to pay attention as it can affect a number of things: first if it's passing over a group as you join them together it may not collect them all, this can really mess things up if you have left over portions.

Second it's important to give youself plenty of time to join together a large mass of blocks to be cleared together, for this to happen it's imperative that you let the line move past where you're intending to drop your first block (and start the collection) and then quickly drop as many blocks as possible to join onto the starter.

try not to get harried by the music

It's nice and all, especially full blast through the headphones but it is important that you don't get carried away by the faster tracks.

Line up blocks quickly then glance at what the next one is

Don't think too hard about if's n buts, just line up a block, double check if it should be dropped before or after the collecting line has passed and when decided, glance at the next block. If there was no reason to drop the current block fast (didnt need to get in there before the line passes) then you should have time to look at the play area and have an idea of where to put the next block.

don't look more than one block ahead

Because then we have the next thing which is..

don't over complicate

A no brainer, you'll waste time, you'll confuse yourself. What's needed is practise so that half the thoughts are taken away from you and you merely /do it/.

think about your clear blocks

These are incredibly important no matter what level you get to.

Firstly, the clear block in order to ignite must be joined actually in a group of 4, not adjacent or whatever.

Secondly, any like-colour block touching it will be removed, This is the most important thing as you can clear in some cases the whole screen of one colour if there's a path connecting them all.

Thirdly, once ignited it remains possible to add blocks to the path and connect up new paths. For this reason it is extremely important to time correctly when you set off the clear block, you need pay attention to the clearing line so that when the block is ignited the line will come along and take out as much as possible *and* you will have time to drop down new blocks to connect up pathways not currently connected. Likewise you should prepare yourself before setting off the clear block by ensuring that as many blocks as possible are connected, all that's needed here is to look at the clear block's colour and then look at what's around it and drop the right colours into place to ensure a nice path is routed around the screen. There's no need to make it pretty or to fret as it's about to be annihalated anyway.

Finally, we go back to that line thing again - it can cut off the left hand side of our clearing path if we time it wrong, so just pay attention.


Adapt to the speed of the stage

Unlike say tetris attack where we have a constant speed increase, Lumines speed changes according to the music and so should you, if you play at the same speed constantly then you're screwed.. so:

Pay attention to the clearing line speed, if it's passed by you then slow down, after all you can't clear anything so have a double take on your options, if it's coming up fast and you already have some squares completed then look again if you can add to them.

If the blocks are falling too fast then don't fret, relax, ignore the clearing line and just do your best to aim for like-colours. If the clear line is moving too slow then again, just let things drop slowly as you'll only pile things up.

Don't be too one dimensional - don't look for just squares.

if you're always aiming for squares then you won't get far it's fair to say, any shape is good pretty much apart from utter randomness. For example horizontal lines are fine, vertical lines, a U-shape is fine, as is an S-bend as all of these will easily collapse.

Don't let single units sit alone

Just a final thing for now, if you have single blocks alone then they'll cause chaos left alone as everything else will get misaligned so whenever possible get rid of them (with a 3+1 where the 3 is the same colour).


Uhm and you got my score wrong

Honestly, above are just my thoughts dumped out. I think the largest part like with any puzzle game is simple practise, practise & more practise, with every hour spent there's one more situation commited to reflex.

I found being at my parents over christmas was the best thing as I just got to sit around and play a lot (All good except for when my Mum starts talking to me whilst gaming - she's done this ever since I got a SNES years back. I mean I just don't get it - it drives me ****ing insane, it's clear i'm kinda occupied)

[Akujiki]

Hi, I hope it is intended for people to simply post up their hi-scores (not sure because this thread is so clean). Just made 428,055 (and beat my boss on his PSP). Yay!

Sorry Marcus, your score isn't worth the 5th place anymore ;-) ... unless of course you just didn't post your progress since April.

[marcus]

Bah - Ive not played this for a good while now, maily because each go seems to last me well over an hour now! Nice score though!

[SubparMario]

Might as well add my best, I know I could go higher!

427,706 - wush

[marcus]

Does the game continue to give new screens, or does it cycle back to the beginning at some point?

[SubparMario]

It goes back to the beginning after the 'Lights' skin, doesn't revert back to the initial speed though!

[Akujiki]

Yeah, the time factor is really a problem. Everytime I sink into the dissappearing blocks for over an hour I risk pissing my missus off She likes the game herself, too, though.

But damn, the competition is fierce, can't stop improving now =) Addictive game!

[Akujiki]

After 2 mediocre (maybe because segmented) runs yesterday, I did surprisingly well at 2 AM... and scored 599,441.

[$h@d0w]

Just posting to tell everyone about this great website here:

http://www.inthebin.co.uk/

It a scoreboard which lets you upload your data using a special client (so there is no cheating). I have my score on there as "Shad0w".

PSP Firmware 1.00 and 1.50 is required for this to work though.

[Kubrick]

Finally broke the half-million barrier.

590,760

Reached the "Strangers" skin on the 2nd loop.

[Kubrick]

New highest score

661,397