Luxor 5th Passage adds new tweaks in all the right places

Jun 18, 2013  Outfitted with 25 all-new backgrounds and pathways, LUXOR 5th Passage also introduces the Eye of Horus-click the button when you're in a real jam to eliminate all remaining spheres. And, for the true LUXOR Pharaoh, an Insane difficulty level to test your marble-shooting skills! Celebrate 5 years of LUXOR's reign in the 5th Passage! Aug 05, 2011  Love Games? Subscribe and click the Bell to get notified of new game releases every day! Get ready to wield your scarab shooter in an all-new LUXOR.

There are some games where you already know what you’re going to get before you even start playing. And Luxor is one of them. The Egyptian themed puzzler is back for a fifth time, with Luxor 5th Passage. The game offers up a brand new game mode, a handful of new power ups, and new bonus stages. But even still, this isn’t all that different from the Luxor games you’ve already played.

The game actually dials back the narrative aspect when compared to Luxor: Quest for the Afterlife. There’s no elaborate cut scenes detailing some plot that has little to do with the actual game, instead your greeted with a brief text introduction to the adventure mode and that’s about it. But really, it’s a puzzle game, so the lack of an in-depth story isn’t much of a loss.

The adventure mode itself follows the traditional Luxor formula: you’ll move along a world map completing a total of 100 stages along the way. The stages are divided into different sections, each of which ends with a brand new bonus game. And if the incredible amount of new stages isn’t enough to keep you busy, there’s also a new Blast Mode where you have two minutes to rack up as many points as possible and even a People’s Choice section, which lets you re-play an assortment of stages from past Luxor games. The Blast Mode, in particular, is excellent and has the same addictive quality as Popcap’s Blitz line of games.

The gameplay itself hasn’t changed much. It plays out similar to Zuma, with you shooting out colored balls in order to make matches of three or more. Only instead of shooting them from the middle of the stage, you can move back and forth on the bottom of the screen. And the balls themselves will steadily move along a pre-determined track and you’ll need to clear them away before they reach the end. So far, so good. But where 5th Passage switches things up a bit, is with a quartet of new power-ups. Favorites like the electric ball and fireball make a return, but now there’s also a black hole that absorbs any balls around it and an upgrade that lets you shoot two balls at once. All four of the new power-ups are very helpful and are great additions to the overall experience.

Aside from the power ups the only real tweak is the new bonus stage that you’ll come across frequently during the adventure mode. Instead of shooting balls you’ll shoot spikes during these stages, and the goal is to clear the incoming balls as quickly as possible. It’s nothing special, but it does do a good job of breaking up the action by offering something a little bit different. In addition to the lengthy adventure mode and the two extra modes, 5th Passage also features a few extras to enjoy. The experience is very customizable with four different levels of difficulty — with Insane mode being, as you’d expect, incredibly difficult — and there’s also 20 different achievements you can earn. Simply put, there’s quite a bit to do in this game.

Even without any lavish cut scenes, 5th Passage is still a great looking game. The Egyptian theme is out in full force, with plenty of new backgrounds to play on. But the star of the show visually is the power-ups, many of which result in cool looking special effects. The game isn’t overly flashy, but the visuals are sharp and pleasing to the eye.

It really looks amazing thanks to its glowing vegetation and exotic monsters, confirming once more that Ashes of Creation is definitely a game to watch in terms of graphical fidelity and art direction in MMORPGs. Ashes of creation gameplay trailer. AdvertisementIn case you’re not familiar with the game, it was funded by a campaign on Kickstarter, that gathered an impressive $3,271,809 pledged by 19,576 backers. The campaign was kicked off with a solid prototype ready to show, proving that going into Kickstarter with something tangible to intrigue potential backers goes a long way in being successful.

If you were looking for an evolution to the Luxor formula, 5th Passage isn’t it. Instead, its a culmination of everything that made the previous four games great, with a few new additions to keep things interesting. There’s a huge number of new stages to play through, and the Blast Mode ensures you’ll always have something to do, even once the Adventure Mode is finished. It may not do a whole lot new, but when a game is this good, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

So the most famous Egyptian themed puzzle is back for a fifth time, with Luxor 5th Passage. As this series was always remarkable for its new features, no wonder that we were expecting a new twist from the fifth installment. But in fact you should not wait for any blast or at least small flicker there.

Yes, the game offers a new difficulty mode, new power ups, and new bonus stages. But even still, this is not all much different from the previous titles we have already played.We deserve a bit more than ordinary power ups, don’t we? It seems Luxor: 5th Passage gets back to its basics. Why begin with A-B-C? Did the developers decide that they had drawn a head? Or they thought that simple marble popping was enough for us?

Since the gameplay is the biggest disappointment there, the artwork is just awful. After four brilliant titles with high-quality graphics, these scenes look like drafts. How is it possible to make something worse than what you you had already done four times? The music is okay but quite similar to earlier Luxors. The stages are repetitive and not challenging for the experienced players.All in all, do not try to look for any twist there, it is useless, for sure. Still, this would be nice to try if you do not have a chance to meet the previous four installments. Unfortunately, the successful series is broken.23, November 2010 DoubleGames.