Gaming Trend Review
Lux-Pain
- Official Site
- Platform: DS
- Publisher: Ignition Entertainment
- Developer: #TBD
- Release Date: 03/24/09
- Genre: RPG
Pros
• Excellent audio-visual production values• Intriguing premise
Cons
• Minimal interactivity• Spotty localization
• Confusing story
by Alan Au
At its very core, Lux-Pain is a game that wishes that it were a novel. It tells the story of a secret organization that protects the population from a paranormal parasite that sows discontent and violence throughout society. As a storytelling mechanism it actually works fairly well, with slick art direction, animated video sequences, and excellent voice acting. However, the story itself is difficult to follow, and what little gameplay is present turns out to be fairly disappointing. And don’t even think about trying to play the game without reading the manual. The game itself provides very sparse instructions, and the manual contains essential backstory needed to get players up to speed.
Lux-Pain does a good job with the visuals and animated sequences. The artwork is clean and features interesting character designs (even if they are a bit cliché). I really felt like I was watching an animated series, which is undoubtedly the experience that the game was trying to present. The game also makes good use of visual effects, like distortion and color inversion, to convey a sense of the paranormal. Together, this makes Lux-Pain a very visually interesting title.
The sound design in Lux-Pain is very good. The sound effects and music help to really build a good sense of atmosphere and enhance the overall storytelling experience. The game also features extensive use of voiceovers, which are well executed. The writing itself stumbles in a few places, but that may have more to do with translation than with the voice actors themselves.
Screenshots
Lux-Pain is controlled almost entirely using the stylus, particularly the gameplay portions which require a lot of scribbling, dragging, and poking at the screen. The game also has a fairly complex menu system, which is best navigated using the stylus. Of course, the majority of the time the player will simply be tapping the screen or pressing one of the buttons to advance the text, because there is a lot of it. The controls aren't bad, just boring.
Although it tells an intriguing story, the gameplay is one of the weakest areas of the Lux-Pain experience. I’m not entirely surprised, since the video and voice assets probably take up most of the space on the cartridge, leaving very little left over for the “game” portion of this title. I would have expected more graphic adventure activities, something more along the lines of the Phoenix Wright series. Instead, the gameplay revolves around basic stylus activities like scribbling on the touchpad and poking at various hotspots. It quickly becomes clear that gameplay is a secondary consideration, almost an afterthought to the storytelling part of the experience.
The story itself is a bit convoluted. Although the premise and themes are interesting, the game does very little to get the player up to speed. Some of the background information is in the manual. Other pieces of the story are found within various bits of optional in-game text. Basically, the player will have to go digging around a bit to fully understand what’s going on. Perhaps this is an intentional decision to make the game more “interactive” for the player, but it does require extra effort in order to understand what's going on.
A lot the perceived value of Lux-Pain will depend on what the player is expecting. The premise and presentation are clearly the main attraction here, with strong production values and a compelling premise for those who put in the time to explore it. However, the game is also somewhat cryptic, requiring the player to put in a lot of effort to engage with the story. For one thing, the game throws a bunch of new concepts at the player right away, assuming that you know the difference between Sigma, Shinen, and Silent. There are also some weird localization issues, which make the story that much more difficult to comprehend.
Although the game features excellent audio-visual production values and an intriguing premise, it offers very limited interactivity. It also requires some effort to understand the story, in part due to the spotty translations, and because so much of the backstory is buried in text. In the end, Lux-Pain is really more of an interactive novel than an adventure game, and the intriguing premise is undermined by the uninspired gameplay and confusing story.
