Silent, a fearful mind parasite, is spreading across Kisaragi City. It infects humans and takes control of their minds, forcing them to kill. Atsuki is a member of FORT, a secret organisation devoted to eradicating this parasite. Will he be able to find the original Silent and exterminate this threat forever? Only you can decide...

Lux-Pain is set in Kisaragi City, a town plagued by mysteries from small mishaps to murders - with no logical explanation as to why these events occur. It seems "Silent", a worm born through hate and sadness, is infecting humans and forcing them to commit atrocious crimes. You play as Atsuki, a member of a secret organisation - all of whom have strange powers. Your parents were victims of Silent. To avenge your parents, you must go through a dangerous operation to acquire Lux-Pain, a power so strong that one of your eye turns golden (for some reason) when using it, to seek and destroy Silent for good.

Lux-Pain is an interesting concept for a handheld game. It's almost, but not quite, an interactive anime. The plot is unravelled slowly with some impressive voice acting (the voices of which will be familiar to anime fans) and the occasional interactive segment.

Sadly the story line is fairly weak - and doesn't really make a great deal of sense. Full marks for bringing an anime style game to the DS, but poor show for the lack of any real challenging game play. The majority of the time you'll be clicking the screen just to progress the story along as page after page of text and audio dialogue is thrown at you.

The idea is fairly simple - investigate your surroundings and try and capture as many worms as possible and then extract a "term" from it. These terms can then be used in a variety of ways to gather new information to help you in your quest. But this all gets a little too repetitive a little too quickly and only the most determined gamer will be able to play this for any length of time.

Those that love anime may want to give this one a once over, everyone else should avoid. You'd be better advised to spend you money on a proper Japanese anime DVD.

4

Nick Smithson