Hot take: music games are good

Hey, all! To round out July, which ended up being a “three Tuesdays on a biweekly schedule” for Backlog, I’m gonna do two smaller reflections on two games that I picked up again after loving them as a kid: Lumines and Katamari Damacy. I’ll be back in August with some more traditional newsletters on individual games, but for now, here’s some quick thoughts on two games that remind me why music games are incredible.

Oh, also, a quick plug for a piece I wrote over at Polygon: Isles of Sea and Sky taught me it’s okay to move on. It’s the first of a few monthly columns from me about games you might’ve missed with all the amazing things coming out this year. I enjoyed my time with Isles, especially because it asked me, a somewhat stubborn person by nature, to challenge myself to move on in the face of frustration. Hope you like the piece! Now, onto some bite-sized Backlog reflections.

Lumines Remastered

Lumines is a game I always put on those viral “10 games to get to know me” or “25 games that will hopefully communicate something about my psyche” posts that we all seem to do now and again. When I think of puzzle games I adore, Lumines is at the top of my list. Back in 2004, when it first released on the PSP, I played it constantly. I played it home, my face turning red after prolonged periods of deep concentration, which is something that, embarrassingly, still occurs when I play videogames for too long. I played it on the bus, blowing my ears out trying to hear the music over the din and chaos, the volume turned all the way up on my crappy earbuds, a behavior that I’m sure contributed to my lifelong tinnitus. Worth it?

Playing it again in 2024, I was struck by two things: I very much still feel the music in my soul, but, as much as I love the game, I’m content to put it down after a couple runs. Though it had been years since I played any Lumines game (Electronic Symphony and Persona 4 Golden were the main reasons I owned a PS Vita), it was incredibly easy to fall back into its rhythms and strategies. Muscle memory compelled me to drop the little L-shaped patterns onto a single block of the same color, creating a square after gravity settled. My first game ended on level 55. The second, I think, ended around level 97—almost all the way through the 100-level course. The child within could still play, folks. He knew his shit.

That said, the magic was a little bit gone for me. Though it’s going to sound like I’m trying to flex my Pro Gamer™ muscles, I found I remembered how to play a little too much. I was too good, too soon at Lumines, resulting in something that felt less like a challenge and more like a trip down memory lane. It was a pleasant trip, to be sure, and a trippy trip, what with the psychedelic visuals, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that, at this point in my life, that nostalgia might be better fed by just listening to the soundtrack. So, yeah, that’s exactly what I did.

Katamari Damacy Reroll

You know what game’s soundtrack is somehow even better than you remember? Katamari Damacy, that’s what.

I’m an Apple Music guy, because I like my gardens walled, so when I saw the soundtrack finally came to streaming, I listened to it on repeat for the rest of the workday. “Katamari on the Rocks”? Obviously a banger. But it wasn’t until I got to “Moon & Prince,” “Lonely Rolling Star,” and “You Are Smart” that I remembered, Oh right. This game’s music was way, way better than it had any right to be.

So of course I snatched up Katamari Damacy Reroll on sale on Steam and started playing it during the workday when I needed a little break. What, was I not going to roll up the whole world again for the cost of a cappuccino and a half?

I’ve only played the tutorial and the opening two stages so far, but I’m savoring this one. Part of what I appreciate about the indie renaissance that is the modern gaming landscape is that games can be weird again in a way that AAA development cannot support. That said, there’s still nothing like Katamari Damacy to this day. Games get weird, but... not quite this weird. It’s still singular this many years later. So, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be keeping this one on my Deck for a long while, thank you very much.

That, and listening to the soundtrack over and over again. Which probably goes without saying.