Luxor is one of those sagas that I used to play as a kid when I had time and nothing better to do. For better or for worse I've played 2, 3, Quest for the Afterlife, even the Mahjong version or the hidden object one and remember them fondly. Was it the gameplay? Not really. The story? There is barely one. So the presentation? Now we're talking.

Luxor is one of those cases where the studio oversells an aesthetic but it somehow works because of how well crafted it is. Not only are the slick effects on point but the music in particular makes use of many instruments such as the harp, the flute and of course, the drums. Each beat and intensity is immediately transferred into the gameplay and you get sucked in into what otherwise would be a variant of Zuma.

Indeed, this is a match 3 on rails as in you control a pad from the bottom of the screen that goes left and right and tries to match balls of the same color in order to prevent them getting into your pyramid. That's the gist of it so it is a challenge of speed, of what colors come up, how accurate you are, how you use the powerups you can gain after a 3 combo and most importantly what path do the balls take. And that in particular is where the game falls completely apart.

Let's do some thinking. If you are a pad that goes left to right and shoots up balls of a certain color that need to match with at least other 2 to destroy them, what's the worst possible orientation they'd need to go for you to have to wait? That's right, vertically. And what did the people behind this game do? They made repeating levels where a bunch of them have a vertical path. So in reality unless you get lucky with the color patterns or the powerups (let's say the lighting bolt that shoots straight up) then you'd more often than not be screwed in these. In the rest of them if you're fast enough you could deal even with some bad rng.

Regardless, by the end of the day, even if the game was trying to sell me on its in-game achievements, its immersion and basically the Egyptian look, I just couldn't be more done with it. So to newcomers I'd suggest skipping this one and going straight to 2.

Luxor is one of those sagas that I used to play as a kid when I had time and nothing better to do. For better or for worse I've played 2, 3, Quest for the Afterlife, even the Mahjong version or the hidden object one and remember them fondly. Was it the gameplay? Not really. The story? There is barely one. So the presentation? Now we're talking. Luxor is one of those cases where the studio oversells an aesthetic but it somehow works because of how well crafted it is. Not only are the slick effects on point but the music in particular makes use of many instruments such as the harp, the flute and of course, the drums. Each beat and intensity is immediately transferred into the gameplay and you get sucked in into what otherwise would be a variant of Zuma. Indeed, this is a match 3 on rails as in you control a pad from the bottom of the screen that goes left and right and tries to match balls of the same color in order to prevent them getting into your pyramid. That's the gist of it so it is a challenge of speed, of what colors come up, how accurate you are, how you use the powerups you can gain after a 3 combo and most importantly what path do the balls take. And that in particular is where the game falls completely apart. Let's do some thinking. If you are a pad that goes left to right and shoots up balls of a certain color that need to match with at least other 2 to destroy them, what's the worst possible orientation they'd need to go for you to have to wait? That's right, vertically. And what did the people behind this game do? They made repeating levels where a bunch of them have a vertical path. So in reality unless you get lucky with the color patterns or the powerups (let's say the lighting bolt that shoots straight up) then you'd more often than not be screwed in these. In the rest of them if you're fast enough you could deal even with some bad rng. Regardless, by the end of the day, even if the game was trying to sell me on its in-game achievements, its immersion and basically the Egyptian look, I just couldn't be more done with it. So to newcomers I'd suggest skipping this one and going straight to 2.