Xbox Live Arcade is ideal for casual puzzle games, so it should be no surprise when the games that many play on their lunch hours online end up on Arcade for purchase. Mumbo Jumbo's Pong-meets-puzzler, Luxor 2 has made the leap from the PC to your 360.
Many gamers have labeled Luxor a 'Zuma clone' with good reason, although Luxor has a little more going for it than its amphibian ball-spitting counterpart. Take Zuma's ball-shooting gameplay, again needing to match three like-colored balls to clear a section, and turn the stationary swiveling frog into something from Archanoid. Gamers use the 'mystical winged scarab' (think flat pong panel with a cutout for the balls to rest in), moving across the bottom of the screen from left to right, to shoot the new balls into the string of balls slowly creeping its way into your pyramid. Clear them all before they reach your pyramid, and move on to the next level. The gameplay is simple and addictive, as with any successful puzzle game.
Luxor 2 is not a puzzle game the way most folks think of them. In fact, you can certainly clear most levels without half a thought. The 'puzzle' aspect of the game comes from clearing the level in as few moves, and with as many points, as possible. Recognizing how to chain together multiple color explosions is the key to both increasing your score and clearing the lines of spheres quickly. Clearing large amounts of spheres, or an entire string, results in power-ups and jewels raining down. Similar to Archanoid, the power-ups give gamers interesting powers for a ball or three. The power-ups range from 'Lightning Storm', allowing players to electrify and clear a decent-sized chunk of the string, to 'Pharaoh's Dagger', where players throw knives rather than balls for a brief amount of time, clearing any sphere they hit.
Gamers who fail to grasp the 'puzzle' portion of the game will probably tire of the game within the first few hours. The game offers four modes of play with Adventure, Practice, Survival, and Pharaoh's Challenge, although Adventure mode is where most gamers will spend their time. Adventure mode takes players through the eighty-eight different levels to the completion of the game. The other modes allow gamers to pick a previously reached level from Adventure and play it separately.
