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Lux Pain
Lux Pain (not to be
mistaken with Max Pain) is an interesting game that has the gamer
transforming into the young gruff hero known as Atsuki Saijo, a man who
is responsible in uncovering and defeating a powerful mind parasite that
thrives on hate and sadness called SILENT. With a purely anime driven
story, including the graphics and the characters that you meet, Lux Pain
is an adventure game that turns the player into a gumshoe detective in
the fictitious city of Kisaragi.
Features
-
Investigate your
surroundings and gather hints by conversing with characters in the
game
-
Explore the massive
world of Kisaragi City
-
Use your stylus to
conduct autopsies of Silent worms found throughout the game
-
Psychic Powers
enable you to save potential victims from Silent
Use your stylus to find the parasite before it reaches the heart of
the victim.
By going undercover in
order to solve this mystery which has the city of Kisaragi in chaos, due
to this "infection" that has normal people committing suicide, attacks
of murder and other nefarious actions, you need to solve a variety of
clues in order to progress in the game and of course uncover the big
bad. Thankfully you have a few tricks up your sleeve that include
telepathic powers which allows you to read the thoughts of others which
will assist in your adventure. For instance, when you see a person, they
will appear in different colours, each part of the emotional spectrum
and by questioning the person, these will begin to change to uncover the
clues of whether they are or are not infected.
When you do find an
infected person, you need to help rid them of this parasite or SILENT
which is done through the touch screen controls of the DS. By using your
stylus to scratch at the person, you will eventually uncover the
parasite and destroy it which is an interesting mini-game (there are
more), however a little lackluster as it becomes quite repetitive. Apart
from talking to people, you need to explore the town with the map, use
your mobile phone and visit the internet cafe to check e-mails. Very
interesting... although something seems to be missing.
The unfortunate aspect
of Lux Pain is that the gameplay revolves around this characteristic of
the game, find people with SILENT and remove it. At first, it's quite
interesting as you are attempting to save these innocent souls who have
been ordered to create mayhem in the city of Kisaragi that was a little
spooky at first, however it unfortunately becomes a repetitive task. In
spooky what I mean is that the top screen displays some dastardly
thoughts of those you encounter... very cool. Also, before you can get
to this stage, you need to engage in some long winded dialogue which
seems lost in translation.
Graphically, Lux Pain
looks very Anime inspired and suits the story perfectly, unfortunately
it does not meld too well with the gameplay. The musical score is great
and goes from boppy to dark, depending on the situation. Classic anime
bests describes the soundtrack. The digitised dialogue is also quite
impressive, although quite forced and comical at times.
At the end of the day,
Lux Pain had a very interesting concept that unfortunately seems
once again lost in translation which is a shame because the story was
there, it just needed the gameplay to be tweaked. Those looking after an
Anime inspired game may want to check this out, however for more
hardcore gamers, Lux Pain (pun intended) is a mixed bag of emotions,
both homicidal and depressing. |
