Lumines Live

The much-anticipated puzzle game, Lumines Live, finally made its way to the Xbox Live Marketplace last week and rather than rejoicing the arrival of this former PSP-exclusive, it seems that everyone would rather find reasons to bitch and complain. Did I ever mention I hate gamers? Well, I do. Most of the Internet hysteria consists of berating Microsoft (who doesn't set the pricing structure or delivery schedule by the way, Q Entertainment, the game's publisher does) for selling an incomplete game. It seems that these folks thought they'd be getting the full $40 PSP experience on Xbox Live for $15. Why they thought that is beyond me.

I agree that labelling the $15 download as the "full game" was misleading, however, anyone who has read anything about this game over the past couple months knew full well that the "full game" was really just the main basic puzzle mode, time attack, and the infrastructure and UI for the puzzle and Vs CPU modes. The reason for this is many people, like me, think the Puzzle Mode is a complete waste of time. And that playing Vs CPU is utterly pointless when you're already on Xbox Live in the first place -- just play against a human!

Yet the complaints pour in nonetheless. Everyone jumping on the bandwagon and giving Microsoft a drumming for this "costly misstep". Puhleeze. The downloadable game gives you enough of the missing modes for you to sample so you know whether or not you actually want to spend the extra money on them. Now, had Achievements have been linked to those additional purchases, I would have been annoyed, but they're not. So now I'm actually happy that I didn't have to pay for something (like I did my PSP version) that I know I'm not going to use.

As for the "Advance Pack" of extra skins, maybe they should have been included with the main game, maybe not. I don't know. I do know that I can't complete all 12 of the skins that came with the game I bought -- and judging by the high scores on Xbox Live most of you can't either -- so why is everyone upset that they have to purchase extra skins? It's not like you would have seen them otherwise anyway.

This is just another reason why I've weened myself off of visiting message boards and paying too much attention to the gaming "news" of the day. It's a pointless waste of time that only serves to get my blood pressure higher than it needs to be. Yes, Q Entertainment should not have labelled the download as the "full game" as that was misleading, but still, for $15 what did you all think you were going to get?