Luxor Evolved

Developer: MumboJumbo
Released: Mar 2012
Hours Played: 2.4
Similar To: Atlantis Sky Patrol / Sparkle 2 / Zuma's Revenge 
Rating: 3/5 Parsnips 




GAMEPLAY
There are at least eight Luxor games that are available from Steam at the time of writing with gameplay being the same for each. I chose this one for the collection as I wanted something different from their usual trademark of the Egyptian motif. You have a ship that moves from left to right across the bottom of the screen. There are little paths above you with a line of travelling circles making their way towards a pyramid at the end. Fire your own circular missile into the line from your ship to make a chain of three or more and thus destroying those circles in a sparkling explosion. Clear the level so that there are no more circles and move onto the next stage. Some call it a match 3 while others may refer to it as a marble-popping game but it has the mechanics of a 2D shooter as well. 

 
BALANCE & PACE
With a few bonus levels and a few mildly tricky boss levels thrown in, that's all you do. You also have the odd special missiles that can be fired such as one that freezes a large chunk or destroys large sections of the line.Power-ups float down to your ship to mix up the gameplay a bit but, for me, it's the kick-ass music that really rescues the game from the bin of mediocrity. With the score and symbols that you catch being totally pointless the game really works best if you crank up the volume and just blast your way through the stages without really paying too much due care and attention to anything else. It gets fast and furious and although a tad easy it does a fine job –largely thanks to that pumping soundtrack – in making you feel uber when you take down the levels.


PRESENTATION & DESIGN
Luxor Evolved features a neon-lighting art-style with bright glowing circles placed on an outer-space background. The menu design for this game is not really up to much. At the start-up screen you're shown what stage you're at and what percentage of the game has been completed but there is no Level-Select screen or map-screen to get an idea of the overall picture or to inform you of where you're at. It also means that you cannot repeat games or go for high-scores. This makes the points system, that the game comes packed with, redundant. Points and scores fly everywhere but when these have no real significance (or any reason to exist) you do wonder why the developers chose to have a scoring system at all.



PROGRESS SYSTEM
Furthermore, there is no real interaction to be had within the menus either. Sure, at the end of each game you get a huge amount of stats scrolling along the screen but, again, with no storage of all these figures you wonder why they bother. Finally, at the end of each level there is a meter that stretches towards some sort of power-up and lots of displays of upgrades and things being unlocked but unfortunately without any more information on what these are about, I felt myself feeling a bit lost as to what it all meant. With this in mind Luxor Evolved is not really a nerd-friendly offering and, as mentioned, probably best enjoyed as a game to romp through while watching pretty lights and listening to the top-notch soundtrack. 

CONCLUSION

Although not really a shoot 'em up, the game pretty much plays as such. The only difference is that you have to hit circles with the same colour as your own missile. Generally, trying to clear the wave as quickly as possible is the way to go. Often you'll be frantically hitting the circles as they get to within a few inches of the pyramid and the vast majority of the time, you'll manage this no problem. Even if they do, they simply rewind and you then get to finish them off quite quickly anyway so the game is not really that much of a challenge. Forget high-scores (you’ll have to plump for the superior Zuma games for this) or what the hell the upgrades are all about and just blast your way through... and if you want more, the Luxor series has no end of decent enough prequels to this.