On Fridays, Game|Life slips on a Hawaiian shirt and a pair of Dockers and visits the world of casual gaming.
Although it's available on virtually every casual gaming site in existence, I didn't play MumboJumbo's Luxor 2 until it came to the Xbox Live Arcade. I'd written it off as a *Zuma *or Ballistic clone, and having played the hell out of those, I figured Luxor 2 had nothing new to offer me. That was my first mistake.
My second mistake was, knowing what an Achievement whore I am, assuming that I would much rather play the XBLA version than the Wii version (renamed Luxor: Pharaoh's Challenge). Wrong again. Weighing those 200 points against the elegant simplicity of the motion controls, it's really not even close.
In case you've somehow managed to miss Luxor 2 -- and if you have, I want your unnaturally good avoidance skills with me if I'm ever trapped in a minefield -- it's a matching colors game liberally doused in an ancient Egyptian theme. A chain of colored balls snakes its way through the playfield as your cursor at the bottom of the screen is constantly fed a single ball at a time to shoot at the chain. If the chain gets too far across the field, you lose.
Match three colored balls and they disappear, earning you points and shortening the chain. Hampering your efforts are obstacles that get between you and the advancing chain -- sometimes they're in the environment, sometimes a loop in the chain itself is blocking your ideal shot -- and the fact that you can only move left and right. Unlike some other games of this ilk, your shots don't ricochet or bounce, which makes the basic controls far easier to learn, but can make getting out of a sticky situation more difficult.
Shoot well and you'll earn powerups that slow the chain, give you a wild card ball that matches anything, or a lightning bolt that will destroy anything it hits. I couldn't tell you what all of this has to do with saving Egypt, really; perhaps Ra has a massive case of OCD.
Luxor 2 is an absolutely perfect fit for the Wii. Its controls are so simple that literally anyone can master them in seconds. Just point the Wiimote at the screen and move your wrist left and right. That's it. No complex button combinations to learn, no waggle, just tiny movements left and right. Those people in your house who never dreamed of playing a videogame before you brought home Wii Sports will have no problem instantly grasping the concept of Luxor 2 and will be pleasing the gods of Egypt in no time.
More advanced players might find *Luxor 2 *to be a bit on the repetitious side -- you've seen one slithering snake of bocce balls, you've pretty much seen them all -- but will still find challenge in creating high-scoring combos, collecting all of the game's powerups, or achieving the highest player ranking. In other words, getting achievements, just without the points.
Luxor 2 on the Wii doesn't differ that greatly from the XBLA version, and I don't have any casual players in my house unless you count those times the cat accidentally steps on the controller buttons, so why do I prefer the Wii version? It's far more relaxing. It sounds ridiculous, but take away those Achievement points and make the controls little more than bending my wrist, and suddenly it's a markedly more laid-back experience.
Perhaps I simply have a different mindset when I'm playing something on the 360 than when I'm playing something on the Wii. Maybe firing up my Elite puts me in a more aggressive frame of mind than turning on Nintendo's cheerful white box, and maybe Luxor 2's gameplay simply fits better with that Wii frame of mind.
Hopefully more casual games of Luxor 2's high quality will find their way to the Wii, and soon.
