Ads are gone. We're using Patreon to raise funds so we can grow. Please pledge support today!

3DS | DS | PS3 | PS4 | PSP | VITA | WII | WIIU | X360 | XB1 | All

Luxor: The Wrath of Set (PSP) review

"In Luxor, you are a warmongering scarab out to destroy all the other scarabs before they can push a bunch of multi-coloured balls into a nearby pyramid. I guess these balls are bombs or something, because if even one makes it into the pyramid, YOU LOSE."

Desperately Seeking Nephthys

On the back of their new puzzle/shooter hybrid's box, fledgling publisher MumboJumbo makes a big deal out of the fact that Luxor: The Wrath of Set takes place in Egypt. As we all know, ancient Egypt was an extremely cool place to live... if you can look past the human sacrifice, slave labour, and tiny scorpions crawling into peoples' ears while they sleep.

Luxor: The Wrath of Set, which I will heretically refer to as Luxor from now on, is actually the third or fourth or maybe even fifth game in the series. (There are a lot of them.) If I had played the other episodes, which are also set in Egypt, I'd probably be getting pretty bleeping tired of sandy graphics and casual references to gods I've never met. Fortunately for MumboJumbo, I haven't played the others, so it all feels new to me.

In Luxor, you are a warmongering scarab out to destroy all the other scarabs before they can push a bunch of multi-coloured balls into a nearby pyramid. I guess these balls are bombs or something, because if even one makes it into the pyramid, YOU LOSE. Fortunately, the enemy beetles don't just skitter straight to their goal -- they tirelessly push their train-like chain of orbs along a sunken groove that winds across the screen. Each stage (there are over 100) features a different pattern for the evil ball-pushing scarabs to follow.

The game itself plays kind of like a bastard cross between Space Invaders and Puyo Puyo -- you can move left and right, and you shoot upwards to destroy the multi-coloured orbs. When all of them are destroyed, the enemy scarab dies. The trick is that you don't shoot bullets. You shoot balls at the... balls. Each shot you fire gets spliced into the train of doom. Careless attacks just make your job tougher (since the train gets longer), but if your shot creates a chain of three or more like-coloured orbs, then that section of the train dissolves. This often reveals valuable treasures or flashy power-up icons.

My favorite power-up is a giant scorpion that runs along the groove like a bat out of hell and eats a bunch of the balls.

If that description's clear, great. If not, then don't sweat the details. All I'm trying to get across is that Luxor is both fresh and thought-provoking. Even without the quaint setting or robust music, it'd be fun simply because of the concept. Fan-made games, doujin games, homebrew games -- whatever you want to call them -- often live or die based on their concept. Luxor feels more like a fan-made game than a commercial release, but it's a damn good one.

I've never played anything quite like Luxor: The Wrath of Set, but now I can say I've played a fun dozen hours -- and I've still got more difficulty levels left to master. It's a long, challenging game that's perfectly suited to the PSP's wide screen. I'd call that worth buying.

//Zig

Rating: 7/10

Staff review by Zigfried (December 13, 2006)

Zigfried likes writing about whales and angry seamen, and often does so at the local pub.

More Reviews by Zigfried
	One Chance (PC) One Chance is a bad game for obvious reasons. The graphics are poor, the music is repetitive, the guy walks slowly, the story is silly, player interaction is minimal, and victory is achieved through repetition instead of mastery. Its claim to fame is that you only have one chance unless you game the syst...
	Canabalt (PC) I view people who subscribe to the holy book of Canabalt the same way that Orson Scott Card intended readers to view Xenocide's Qing-Jao: as obsessive and deranged failures, compulsively tracing lines in wood until they realize they've accomplished nothing. Then they die.
	Splatterhouse (PlayStation 3) Once upon a time, all this blood and nudity would have been daring. I remember gasping in awe when playing the originals . . . of course, those were marketed towards pre-teens who couldn't even get into R-rated flicks. In today's world, hacking up misshapen beasts and grabbing softcore pics just isn't enough.

Feedback

If you enjoyed this Luxor: The Wrath of Set review, you're encouraged to discuss it with the author and with other members of the site's community. If you don't already have an HonestGamers account, you can sign up for one in a snap. Thank you for reading!

You must be signed into an HonestGamers user account to leave feedback on this review.

Site Policies & Ethics | Contact | Links

© 1998-2015 HonestGamers
None of the material contained within this site may be reproduced in any conceivable fashion without permission from the author(s) of said material. This site is not sponsored or endorsed by Nintendo, Sega, Sony, Microsoft, or any other such party. Luxor: The Wrath of Set is a registered trademark of its copyright holder. This site makes no claim to Luxor: The Wrath of Set, its characters, screenshots, artwork, music, or any intellectual property contained within. Opinions expressed on this site do not necessarily represent the opinion of site staff or sponsors. Staff and freelance reviews are typically written based on time spent with a retail review copy or review key for the game that is provided by its publisher.