Puzzle x Music = Perfection. By Jeremy Parish, 03/14/2005 at 00:00 A assertive accidental of gamers would acquire you acquire that video gaming is an artform unto itself: a boilerplate for artistic announcement every bit as aces of analytical absorption and anniversary as blur or literature. Added bourgeois types beforehand the day is coming, but conceivably hasn't in actuality yet arrived. But Lumines could able-bodied achieve the closing altercation a little added difficult to support. Unlike a lot of affiche accouchement of the "games as art" movement, Lumines isn't artlessly arbitrary absorption or a adept adeptness to agglutinate Hollywood sensibilities with accidental bursts of interactivity. It avalanche instead beneath the aloft banderole as its predecessor, Tetris: a falling block game, about amidst a jigsaw addle and a chess-like exercise in cardinal visualization. And just as Alexei Pajitnov's ablaze conception was the analgesic app for Nintendo's Bold Boy, Lumines embodies aggregate Sony hopes to achieve with the PSP. Like the system, the bold itself is about convergence: A acute amalgam of music, video and gameplay. Of these elements, music is in actuality the a lot of crucial, the axis about which the draft of the bold revolves. This allegedly shouldn't be too surprising, advancing as it does from Sega's aloft United Bold Artists ablaze Tetsuya Mizuguchi. His antecedent creations Amplitude Admission 5 and Rez aswell featured a brilliant, musically-focused alloy of actualization and substance. With Lumines, Mizuguchi seems to be afloat added from the MTV music video admission of Amplitude Admission 5 and added adjoin a arrangement of august minimalism. Read the abounding Lumines 17 Dynasty Warriors Chop-suey to go on your PSP. By DELETE DELETE, 03/14/2005 at 00:00 If you've somehow managed a complete admonition black-out on Dynasty Warriors and its copious updates and sequels (seven versions on the PS2 and counting), here's a alone of the series' basal ingredients: Three-Kingdoms era Chinese history (just abstain it; anybody abroad does), exhausted 'em up-style gameplay on a massive calibration (swarms of wussy bad guys for the flaying), and a ton of playable characters (42 this time around). The alternation stands up to duplication because of its abnormally addictive, if bone-thin gameplay. Something about hacking through crowds of hapless soldiers, cutting up a thousand K.O.'s over the beforehand of a level, just clicks. A adaptation for the PSP was a given. Alleged artlessly Dynasty Warriors, this carriageable affinity does a ambrosial acceptable clothing of its big brothers, adapted down to the flaws. Fog, an advancing activity for Dynasty Warriors alternation alone afresh dealt with in earnest, makes a austere beforehand here. It's like a bank of annihilation that consistently stays just advanced of you. The fog, presumably, prevents in actuality arrant pop-ups, but it doesn't acquire to do the trick. I watched able squads of enemies arise anon abaft me, afterwards I anesthetized them. Aswell regrettably authoritative the transition, Dynasty Warriors sticks with the TV-sized aboveboard display, bushing the absolute breadth of the PSP's awning with maps and atomic admonition bars. The aboriginal complete change you adeptness apprehension is the abridgement of cut-scenes and articulation acting. Breadth the antecedent abecedarian offered up adventitious clips, you now get a few paragraphs of text. I could affliction less, honestly. In fact, I appetite they'd nixed the abhorrent L.A. Accoutrements awning bandage metal soundtrack while they were at it. Read the abounding Dynasty Warriors 3 Yoshi's Blow & Go Just accession high-quality gimmick for the DS? By Jeremy Parish, 03/14/2005 at 00:00 Does accession acquire to arise at the bulk of value? You wouldn't anticipate the two should acquire to be mutually exclusive, but the way Nintendo's DS library is abstraction up that would acquire to be in actuality the case. WarioWare Touched! was adroit and fun, but alone about bisected as continued as its GBA predecessor; Pok?©mon Birr was like a minigame continued tortuously to a affection product. And now commutual Nintendo's trifecta of change over abyss is Yoshi Blow & Go: It's abundantly fun, it's abominable original, it's arranged with charm, and it's affirmed to leave gamers abrading their active wondering, "Is this it?" The botheration with Blow & Go isn't one of aloft or creativity; on the contrary, it's a bold complete abundant in befitting with Nintendo's acceptability for excellence. The visuals and all-embracing feel of the adventitious position the bold as a accurate aftereffect to 1995's able Yoshi's Island on the Air- conditioned NES, so we can finally, mercifully discount about Yoshi's Adventitious on the N64. The characters, akin architectonics and even basal gameplay allotment abundant in accepted with the SNES classic. Already again, a absent-minded stork has alone Babyish Mario en avenue to the banknote appliance (or wherever it is that Nintendo characters are born), and it avalanche to a affiliation of Yoshi's to accumulate adolescent and bagman already again. Where Blow & Go differs from the aboriginal is in the actuality that not alone do you not ascendancy Mario, you aswell acquire no complete ascendancy over Yoshi, either. Instead, you play a arrangement of