DPrime Review: Luxor 2

Luxor 2 is puzzle game developed by MumboJumbo. You can purchase Luxor 2 from the Xbox Live Arcade or you could get it like me and buy a Xbox 360 Arcade. The game never really described the story to me so I came up with my own. In my story you play as flying Luxor god whose purpose for existence is to stop the hobos from rolling their balls into your temple and sleeping there. The hobos (scarab) things push bright colorful balls towards the Luxor temple and to stop the balls you must shoot more colorful balls at the line of balls to get three or more of the same color in a row to destroy balls. If you destroy three things of balls in a row you are awarded a power-up. Some power-ups are actually helpful such as lightning storm, scorpion, or the daggers. While other power-ups that I personally only get when I am in trouble are pointless like net, wild ball, and speed shot.

When I first picked up Luxor 2 I was immediately sucked into it’s addictive gameplay. In the beginning of the game it is nice slow and easy but after a few levels you realize this game while kick the fuck out of you. I am right now on level 11-3 after losing a whole lot I had to look it up how many levels are in Luxor 2 the answer is 88. This to some may not seem like a big number and it would not feel like it if there was 88 different levels but right now I am on my fourth playthrough of the levels. The levels take about five minutes to play which is not that long but when you get stuck and are trying over and over to beat one single level those five minute sessions lead to you playing the same level for hours and hours.

Luxor 2 features three different game types. The overly addictive story mode, A survival mode, and The Pharaoh’s Challenge mode. The survival mode is just as it sounds you have to stay alive for as long as possible. In The Pharaoh’s Challenge Mode you are given limitless daggers that make the balls explode which sounds easy but after a while the lines of balls move super fast and you can get more than one on the screen at a time. There is one more game type and if you can unlock it well you deserve it it’s called the Challenge of Horus and to even unlock this horrible mode you must beat the story on expert and well I am stuck on 11-3 of easy mode and yeah it is that hard.

What I liked:

Addictive gameplay: This game stole numerous hours of my life from me just because it was so fun but also so challenging.

Cool Power-Ups: The game features so pretty unique and cool looking power-ups scorpion and Lightning storm are among my favorites.

Originality: The idea is simple enough and used in other games but by adding The Pharaoh’s Challenge mode they made this game pretty original in my eyes.

What I didn’t like:

Difficulty: There really is no reason I can think of to make the game so hard even on easy mode this game still started kicking my ass.

The Map: As you progress in the story mode the map continues to move and the spot you thought was the end well it turns out not to even be close to the end of the game.