Tetris DS Review

[Blaine]

So, everyone's played Tetris. I refuse to explain anything about Tetris basics. Instead I'm going right into what is different about Tetris DS.

Tetris DS is chock full of different modes of Tetris including Push, Challenge, Standard and Puzzle. Honestly, each version stands very well by itself. I found the Item mode (where you can get power-ups to use against the other player) a nice change of pace - although for my money, the best Multiplayer Tetris remains The Next Tetris for N64.

I personally dug the whole 8-bit Nintendo remix that they applied to all the graphics and sounds. It was refreshing to see the Balloon Fight artwork reused again.

That said, I feel the gameplay has a monsterous flaw when compared to the original Tetris for GameBoy. Allow me to explain. As the pieces fall with greater and greater velocity, you find yourself apt to make mistakes. That's pretty much the point of the increased speed. However, if you repeatedly rotate your piece over and over again, your piece will never stop falling. It wil hover just above ground level. In fact, you can even make it move upwards if your current playfield is shaped like a staircase and you have a certain piece.

In what I assume was an attempt to make the last second rotations, that one sometimes find necessary, more player friendly - they've basically given you the ability to park a piece indefinitely whilst you sit and leisurely calculate your next move.

I discovered this my very first time playing the game and it didn't take but one additonal try to completely finish the standard 200 line mode. Even though levels 15 and up were blazingly fast... it just didn't matter. What's more, using the ability to store pieces, you can sit and rotate an piece for a few minutes and then swap out for a new piece that will fall from the top again!

I mean.... what's the point?

So essentially, there's no 1 player standard Tetris fare. I mean... there is, but why play it if victory is inevitable?

Again, the other modes are fun in and of themselves, but I never thought I'd see the day when someone - let alone Nintendo of all people - managed to screw up Tetris!

Frankly though, my point that everyone has played Tetris cuts both ways here. Since  I'm sure everyone in the free world has at least one version of Tetris for something - not a big deal, and the other modes are a great deal of fun.

But here's problem #2, for a game that has so many modes... and so many "challenges" and so many puzzles to "complete", there is 0 depth. You get - no rewards. There's no unlockable stages, graphics, modes, music or even a freakin' sound test. There's nothing! How? What's to keep me coming back? I mean, the Puzzle mode is neat but I don't really care if I can analyze what order I should drop the next three pieces! And if I accomplish this task, my reward is the feeling of a job well done... for a job that one could randomly guess pieces until finding the solution.

Problem #3 is actually sorta minor in comparison. The online gameplay is fun, it really is. But the WiFi FriendCode is so user unFriendly that it's absurd. I long for the days of the ChuChu Rocket chat room where I could actually meet and talk to people before/after playing them. A large part of the online experience is social interaction, for me. Otherwise I might as well be playing bots.

All the complaints aside, 4 player online Tetris is as good as possible (the "feature" where you can keep a piece in place indefinitely is essentially negated since in multi-player Tetris, speed is of the essence). The local WiFi 10 player Tetris is about the greatest thing I've ever heard - although I don't think I'll be able to find 9 other people with a DS to play with. Never the less, the multiplayer aspect in Tetris DS is about as high as I could expect it.

All in all it's not a bad game, by any stretch. It's just not very good for a $30+ DS game. That's all. I mean if it was a budget title, I'd complain less. But for a full price game, I expect a certain level of depth and replayability. I just don't think it delivers.

[NFG]

I'd have to concur.  I really do love my tetris, and I think the HOLD feature adds a welcome level of complexity, but beyond that most any change to the core game essentially fucks it up.  

There is no depth, I agree on that score, but then - it's tetris.  The basic game is as good as anyone could expect Tetris to be, but it's definitely true there's nowhere to go.  If you love Tetris, I think this is the version with bells on, it's what you want and a lot more.  What surprises me most though is the lack of customization.  Why CAN'T I disable the hold mode?  Why does the game allow indefinite piece parking?  I didn't know it did until now, but it's disappointing to hear.

I only wanted Tetris, and that's what I got.  The extras are nice, but it's the core game I wanted, and it's more or less exactly that.

Nice review.

[Blaine]

Here's an example of parking a piece and making a piece move upwards. You'll notice nothing but the highest level of technology was used in capturing this video (me holding my cellphone in my mouth).

Anyone with Quicktime or Media Player Classic or a variety of other programs should have no problems with the 3g2 format:

http://www.configurationspace.com/TetrisDS.3g2