What's worse than a worm in an apple?...

Throughout the long history of gaming, we’ve witnessed multiple forms of entertainment encompassed by a wide variety of genres. From simplistic, entertaining platformers to deep and detailed point and click adventures, videogames have brushed along the lines of many types of external genres/pastimes. However, since the young lifeline of the DS, crime investigation and sleuthing has become a very popular genre. Games such as Phoenix Wright or Professor Layton, though very different in style and gameplay, have captivated gamers through their beautiful presentation and enthralling storylines.

Lux-Pain is a title that I knew little about (much like a few recent Ignition Entertainment titles including Boing! Docomodake DS and Tornado) but I was excited to play it. Any game boxed in a flashy, holographic sleeve complete with a free book of art has the ability to pique my curiosity. Reading the back of the box also proved promising through its seemingly deep story about a defense organization and its attempts to thwart an evil worm infestation.

Pure-Pain

The story takes place in Kisaragi City where the worm known as Silent has caused the local populous to commit unthinkable crimes. The hero, Atsuki, lost his parents to the Silent but must use his special powers of Lux Pain to destroy the Silent infestation. Typical of many JRPGs, you begin by being thrown into the action, as you remove your first worms right from the get go. When removing worms, players must enter “Sigma” mode and are given the ability to scratch away parts of the screen so they can see beneath the surface. If you find a worm, you must then pluck it by tapping it multiple times.

At first I thought it was a little interesting being able to scratch away the surface of the scenery, much like scratching a lottery ticket. However, I quickly learned that this was one of the main forms of gameplay within the game and quickly tired of it. In fact, I soon found that this was almost entirely the only part of the game that can constitute as gameplay aside from picking a place to visit or choosing between two answers in dialogue.

See, the game plays out more like reading a graphic novel than playing a videogame, with decent voice acting and cut scenes throughout. However, the phrase “reading a graphic novel” should be taken as literally as it is presented, as players hardly “play” at all. We’ve seen the extent of problems that games with overloaded cut scenes have experienced (The Bouncer) with critics, and this most certainly constitutes as one of these, where the ratio of story to gameplay is somewhere around 80/20 or even 90/10. 

And, when you consider that around 90% of the gameplay portion is spent extracting worms or choosing responses (there are a few gaps where you’ll fight a similar style of boss battle), it should be clear that the game quickly becomes duller than a butter knife as quickly as you can get accustomed to the story. The only possible saving grace would be if the story were too phenomenal to pass up. However, because it was carried over from a Japanese-exclusive release, some of the dialogue has become muddied by the translation. For instance, much of the voice acting actually doesn’t match what the characters say and at times, the two have no relative coherence whatsoever. This only adds more confusion to the already vague story that lacks explanation for your excursions, abilities, and encounters.

The game does partially redeem itself with its nice looking anime and lengthy cast of characters but its music is easily forgettable (though admittedly not bad). And, despite the fact that the voice acting fails to match up with the characters’ actual dialogue, there is still a large amount of decent quality voice acting throughout the game. However, though the story is rich with text and characters, you’ll find it difficult to be motivated to finish the title.

Summary

Lux-Pain is a very deceiving title from first impressions, boasting a colorful, shiny box with cool looking anime and an art book to go with it; after actually playing the game, gamers will find out that there really isn’t any true gameplay to be had (aside from the worm picking). The game tries its hardest to fit the same niche as Phoenix Wright but most certainly loses its appeal with its overall lack of player impact. Be warned: this game’s presentation is somewhat strong but aside from this, the game really has no other strong points of interest. If you must try it, give it a rent.