Luxor review: 5 stars (Totally Addictive) - I bought my son a new computer and it came with a variety of game demos, including Zuma Deluxe. Well, when I went to the store to inquire about it, I was told they didn't have it...but had something similar: Luxor.
I decided to take a risk and buy it. Let me just say that it's totally addicting!
The object of the game is to fire colored spheres out of the "mystical winged scarab" and destroy the approaching colored spheres by making matches of three or more. The approaching spheres wind through various mazes and the "winged scarab" moves from left to right on the bottom of the screen (unlike Zuma Deluxe, where the shooter rotates 360 degrees from the center).
There are 88 levels to the game (I'm halfway through it), and it would appear that about 13 mazes or so are repeated throughout the levels, but with differing backgrounds. Another thing that is different is the sphere coloring. In the beginning stages, the spheres are green, yellow, red and blue. Later mazes introduced the color purple. I'm at a stage now where white has been added and, judging from one of the intro screens, black will be added as well.
The oncoming spheres snake towards a pyramind (sometimes 2 pyramids simultaneously!), and if you don't eliminate the spheres by that time, the chain whizzes through the pyramid and you lose a life. You shoot the spheres by left-clicking, BUT you can change the color of the ball by right-clicking. At the bottom of the scarab, you're able to see what the next color is going to be which is very strategic if you're getting towards the pyramid and you're being fed a certain color that you don't (desperately!) need.
There are neat power-up talismans that fall from the eliminated spheres, and are accompanied by sound effects such as crashing glass, wolf howls, or choir-like singing. Some power-ups include stopping the oncoming chain, slowing it down, laser accuracy, a lightning power-up (where you can zap an entire vertical row of orbs), and sunburst power-up (where you can blast 5 balls of any color). You have to "catch" these power-ups before they fall to the ground for them to be activated.
My absolute favorite, though, is the color scarab power-ups. If you catch one of these, it will eliminate all the spheres on the board that are of that color. (This comes in really handy when it's coming down to the wire!)
Also, after getting certain combos (I think it's 4+ balls) a gold ankh coin falls; if you catch 30, you get another life.
While Luxor is an arcade action/puzzle game, it's definitely not mindless. With right-clicking to change the colors of the spheres, catching power-ups, and keeping your eye on the ball(s), it can really get your adrenaline going.
The only minus, for me, is that it takes 5-7 mazes to make it to the next section on the Egyptian map. If you lose all your lives at, let's say, maze 4--you're forced to go back to the first maze in that particular section. But this is also part of what makes it so addicting! I mean, who wants to be beaten by a game, right?
One of the features touted on the Luxor box is "original music score", but I only remember hearing the same droning, uinteresting Egyptian-sounding background music. Unlike Bejeweled 2, there's no variations of the music (that I can tell). But you know what? I didn't buy this game for the music.
If you enjoy games like Zuma Deluxe, Bounce Symphony, and the Blaster Ball series, you'll likely enjoy Luxor.
(To see 4 screen shots from Luxor, visit the Reviews--Computer Games section at JanetBoyer.com) 3 stars (Click. Click. Repeat.) - Luxor is a game where it is very much set in a egyptian time period. The game plays very much like Space Invaders or Centipede with the exception of the enemies attacking you. There is NO story what so ever. The controls are rather simple and easy. All you have to do is click the left click button. That's it. The sound is almost annoying. Pretty much you hear the same sound effects for hours and hours. The main difficulty is always different for each level, so, each level has its own personality. You can't really rapidly press the left click button like a machine gun because it wouldn't be playing the game right. The reason why of that is because, the goal of the game is to match colors by launching marbles at the designated marble with the same color. For example, if you have a yellow marble and you see two yellow marbles coming through a slope (like a maze), then you would try to launch that marble at those marbles. If you get three or more of a kind, they would go away very much like Tetris or KLAX except without any shapes. The gameplay can be kind of boring, because you're repeating the techinique of gameplay which is looking at the screen while clicking the left click button. Luxor is very much like an arcade game. There is really cool special effects and quick gameplay. The bad things about Luxor is the lack of replay value. Believe it or not, but there is only ONE game mode. It would've been cool if there are mini-games or co-operative multiplayer gameplay. Luxor is a game that is addicting, but some gamers won't find it appealing. I'm not saying Luxor is a bad game. It is a good game, but it doesn't have the broad pace of appeal that the other games do.
