Title: LUX-PAIN

Title: LUX-PAIN
Publisher: Ignition Entertainment
Developer: Killaware
Genre: Puzzle Adventure
Players: 1
Rated: T



Do you like anime? Do you like anime-based games (that are not based on anime to begin with); do you like anime art-style? Do you like visual novels? If you answered yes to all of these questions then Lux-Pain is obviously the game for you. However, if you like your video games to actually be...you know...GAMES, then you will want to avoid Lux-Pain like the plague.

Lux-Pain is a visual novel about a secret agent who is undercover in a Japanese-but-not high school in order to find the root of a strange disease that is making people commit suicide and other violent crimes. Of course it is up to you and your magical power (which is the namesake for the game) to tell what people are thinking and feeling to get to the bottom of this before it is too late.

Get ready for A LOT of reading.


Graphics

Graphics is sort of an odd term here because this game isn't really as game as much as it is a visual novel. There are some parts of interactivity which I will detail below, but as far as the graphics go there aren't really many to speak off. So instead I will say the art style in the game is very good. The game obviously draws a lot from anime (and for all we know could get it's own in the future) and the drawings are all in full color and look very good for the DS's small screen. Animation is very low, regulated mostly to just moving mouths to signify that the character in front of you is talking. Besides that there aren't really any other things in the game that could be considered 'graphics'. The art style is very good and the drawings are great. It's just a bit of a let down that there wasn't more animation to go with it.

Gameplay

Now here is where the game takes its biggest and most fatal dip. If you go into this thinking you are about to play a game you are SORELY mistaken. RPGs and games like Trauma Center do have a lot of reading, but they actually balance out the amount of reading with challenging gameplay and puzzles. In Lux-Pain you just have reading, reading, and more reading. This makes this game feel more like a visual novel than anything. There will be parts where you have to 'search' your surroundings using the Lux-Pain, but those segments are nothing more than mini-games where you scratch away at the touchscreen to reveal spots of interest. After that the game goes right back into its narrative.

I suppose you could put the story of the game under gameplay since that is what you will be dealing with the entire time. So the story, without spoiling anything is actually pretty decent to a point. The game does a good job of creating a universe around the game that you WANT to get into...but then the story starts throwing so many ideas and plot lines at the wall that it becomes almost a chore to try to follow it all. In the end it makes the story to the game so convoluted and hard to follow that you don't even get a good sense of satisfaction after to slog your way through the entire game. So what you have here is a decent, yet overly complex story with very VERY thin mini-games to pass off as gameplay. Both should've either been fleshed out better or left on the cutting room floor.


Sound

Especially with DS games, the sound design tends to be either lacking or just very poor overall. This is one of the few cases where the sound is actually the best part of the game. I have dogged this game almost the whole time for being a visual novel with tons of reading and no gameplay, but one thing I have neglected to mention about Lux-Pain is that a LOT of the in-game dialogue (I would say roughly 60% to 70%) is FULLY VOICED AND SPOKEN.

Full voice acting in a DS game? I love it. Now, it's not to say that all of the voice acting is GOOD, but actually hearing the sound of a voice really does break up the monotony of constantly reading walls of text just to move the story on to a new set piece of location. There are some localization issues that make the dialogue hard to follow; especially in cases where they voice you hear is completely different from the dialogue you hear on screen. I don't know if this is done because some words just don't translate well, or in order to keep some of the vulgarities out of the game (there are a lot of moments where more colorful words are substituted in dialogue but not in text ,but it's not nearly as bad as it could've been. So that's a good thing.

The music, however, isn't as great as the voice work. But given that most of it just sort of fades into the background during the talking scenes and the various reading sections, it feels more like really bad muzak rather than music of any type. Odds are you won't even notice the music unless you REALLY listen to it. I will say that the theme being played during the opening (fully animated) movie is pretty nifty.


Fun Factor

Do you love reading? Like LOVE it? Okay then. This game is going to be fun for you; if you are not a big fan of tons of reading then you are going to have some trouble here. Even with a love for reading though, the plot of this 'game' is just too many things at once and you will more often than not be completely lost in what you are trying to do versus what the game is actually saying. There will be long stretches during the game where you honest to God just don't know what the hell you have just done or what is going on. You can either choose to just roll with it to see where the story takes you or you will just put the game down forever.

Lasting Appeal

To put it simply, this game is not worth playing through more than once. While there are some story sections that have multiple endings or outcomes, they still all lead to the same conclusion which means you get nothing out of playing through the game again besides the knowledge of what events are going to unfold. If re-reading a book to relive a special moment is a big deal to you, then by all means do it...but then again this IS supposed to be a video game.



The 411

This is a bit of false advertising, the box calls this an adventure game but all this really is a visual novel with a weird story. It's fresh out of Japan look and feel might get the anime fans going, but for everyone else I don't see how this game isn't going to get painfully boring after the first 45 minutes. Do yourself a favor and either pick up a good science fiction book or go play an Eroge Visual Novel instead. You'll be having more fun by yourself anyway with either option.

	Graphics 6.0 The art style is nice and well drawn, but they could've had some life to them. Gameplay 3.0 The story makes little to no sense and the actual 'game' parts are too easy to be considered fun. Sound 8.0 Tons of decent voice acting to break up the text, but the music is very lacking. Lasting Appeal 2.0 If you make it to the end of this game, I doubt you will play it again. Fun Factor 4.5 This is a tall order to consider fun even if you are into this kind of game. Overall 4.5 [ Poor ] legend