Lux-Pain – NDS – Review

Ignition Entertainment has been
active in the gaming world for almost a decade, but it’s only recently that
they’ve begun to make a name for themselves by localizing obscure or
idiosyncratic Japanese games for the American market. Their recent DS offerings
run the gamut of genres, including a shooter (Metal Slug 7), strategy-RPG (Blue
Dragon Plus), and platforming (Boing! Docomodake DS). Lux-Pain looked poised to
be another quality release – an adventure title with a dark, mature storyline,
an attractive anime aesthetic, and unique gameplay. And while Lux-Pain does
possess all these qualities, it’s a confusing mess of a game – so much so that
it’s nearly unplayable.

Lux-Pain takes place in Kisaragi
City, Japan, where there have been a string of bizarre violent incidents –
everything from murder to suicide occurs there with alarming frequency.
Apparently, these events are caused by people infected with “Silent,” a
worm-like parasite that feeds into people’s darkest fears and emotions. Players
take on the role of Atsuki Saijo, a member of FORT, the top-secret agency tasked
with combating the Silent outbreak. By infiltrating the local high school Atsuki
hopes to get to the bottom of the epidemic, as well as gain closure for his
parents’ death at the hands of a Silent-infected killer. So far, so good, right?

Atsuki searches for Silent victims
in the city,
while his contacts at FORT headquarters assist via radio.

The game’s story becomes an
incoherent mess before gameplay even starts. Atsuki’s got a golden eye and some
kind of magical ring, and somehow you’re supposed to begin investigating someone
or something in a dormitory. Pretty soon new characters and terms are being
introduced with no explanation, and you’re somehow supposed to make sense of it
all. The actual moment-to-moment writing isn’t too bad – no broken English or
fractured grammar – but the game never stops to explain what any of it means. In
an adventure game like this, where working your way through the storyline
accounts for much of the game, this kind of disregard for clarity is the kiss of
death.

Too bad you’re never told who or
what the Target is, or why it needs to be investigated.
Good luck trying to get
this game to explain things to you.

So what about the gameplay?
That’s the game’s other major problem: there doesn’t seem to be much, and what
is present is just as poorly explained as the storyline. As the game takes you
from location to location, seemingly randomly, you’ll run into a variety of
other people. Sometimes the Greek letter Sigma shows up on screen, and this is
your signal to scratch furiously across the person on the touch screen. Doing so
reveals the Silent worms inside the person, and once they’re uncovered you have
to touch them for a brief time to remove them from the person. When you’ve
removed the Silent it changes into a short cryptic phrase, like “Seems Kind” –
touching this phrase triggers a short cinematic, where the character’s inner
thoughts and feelings float across the screen. Once you’ve removed all the worms
in this manner a short story sequence ensues, then you’re taken back to the map
to proceed to a new location.

Scratching the touchscreen reveals
the Silent worms inside each character.

And that’s all there is to the
game. You’re carted from place to place, removing worms and viewing emotional
outbursts from every character you encounter. Every so often you might trigger a
short cut scene change of location, but none of it ever makes much sense and your
input never progresses beyond scratching the touch screen and the occasional
dialogue choice.

At least they’ve nailed the
presentation. Lux-Pain features the artwork of Robin Kishiwada, known for
working on the anime series Eureka Seven. The character and background art is
high-quality, as if taken straight from a new anime series, and even though
animation is limited the game looks good (the slick opening cinematic is
especially well-done). The music is courtesy of Kenji Ito, known in the gaming
world for his work on Square’s Mana series and cult-favorite Culdcept; the
soundtrack is dark and moody, setting the creepy vibe immediately. Even the
voice acting gives off the impression of high production values, though it’s not
without problems of its own. Often the on-screen text and voice overs will be
similar but not identical, as if the writers and actors were working from two
different translations. This doesn’t make the story or dialog any easier to
follow, but I guess it’s a minor issue when compared to the rest of the game.

The artwork is topnotch, and some
neat visual tricks,
like the inter-cutting seen here, are used from time to
time.

Lux-Pain has an intriguing
concept wrapped in an attractive audio/visual style. Unfortunately any good
features the game may possess are buried under layers of unintelligible
dialogue, frustratingly vague explanations, and shallow, strange gameplay. Truly
hardcore fans of anything Japanese might be willing to struggle through it, and
they might even convince themselves that they enjoyed it. For most of us,
though, there are too many good games waiting to be played to spend any time or
energy on this asinine title.

Gameplay: 4.5
There’s very little actual
“gameplay” to be found in Lux-Pain. Occasionally you’ll use your stylus to
search and destroy the Silent worms in characters you meet, but for the most
part you’ll just be reading poorly-translated story sequences and trying to make
sense of it all.

Graphics: 7.5
The character and environment
artwork in Lux-Pain is really well done, with high-quality detailed sprites.
There’s not much animation to speak of, but it’s about on par with the Phoenix
Wright series, for example.

Sound: 7.0
The game’s music is moody and
creepy, which does a good job of setting the mood. It can get a little
repetitive, and it’s not anything you’re going to be humming the next day, but
as a soundtrack to a horror/mystery it gets the job done. The voice acting is
pretty good too, though it sounds like the actors don’t understand what any of
it means.

Difficulty: Easy
The game moves you from location to
location, so you can’t really get lost. The only way you could really lose is if
you fail during one of the worm-searching sequences, but the two minutes each
encounter gives you is more than enough time to find and remove the worms.
Provided you’ve got the willingness to keep at it, you can probably play right
through the game.

Concept: 6.0
The bare-bones idea behind the game
– a dark anime-style adventure with touch-screen-based exploration – sounds like
a decent enough idea. The game’s actual story is far too convoluted for its own
good, especially since the game doesn’t explain anything.

Overall: 5.0
Lux-Pain takes a somewhat
interesting set-up then buries it under pages of impenetrable dialogue,
incomprehensible situations, and meaningless touch-screen scribbling. Hardcore
anime fans might be able to muddle their way through, but there are too many
great DS titles begging to be played to waste much time or energy on this
inscrutable adventure.