N-Philes

Tetris Worlds

Posted by Archived.

If any specific genre has a specific king to it that genre would be puzzle games and the king would be Tetris. Since the launch of the original Game Boy Tetris has been played by millions. The simplicity and addictiveness of Tetris drew people in for what would be a single game that would fly by in what seemed like seconds. Tetris has also come out for all of the consoles. So, now THQ gives Gamecube it's first Tetris game, Tetris Worlds. Just following a simple formula, it should be a great game, right? Well, maybe if that formula was followed.

Tetris Worlds has to be the first Tetris game with a story incorporated. The story doesn't even make much sense, but I'll tell it to you anyways. It seems that the planet that the Minos (single block beings) live on, Hadar 4 is in danger. Their sun is going to go nova and they have to evacuate. So they get the best Minos to play Tetris to open the Tetrions (the grids you play Tetris in), which are apparently portals to other worlds. There are 6 different Tetrions, each representing a different world, as well as a different style of Tetris play.

The first world, Deneb, is regular Tetris. Tetriminos (those things that fall in the grid) of 4 blocks each in different shapes fall and you have to try and put them in a line, to clear that line. You can see up to 6 pieces ahead to plan strategy. There is also a hold spot, where you can choose to hold a piece for later use. All other forms use this Tetris as the standard, and then add a twist.

The second world, Mira, is home to Square Tetris. Here, the idea is not only to clear lines but also to create 4 x 4 squares. These can either be made completely of one type of tetrimino, or by using a combination.

The third world, Aludra, involves Cascade Tetris. In this iteration, gravity affects single blocks or a group which isn't held up. If you clear one line which leaves a single piece hanging, that single piece will fall until it hits a solid bottom. If that then causes another line to clear, that is a cascade.

The fourth world, Antares, is where Sticky Tetris is played. There are garbage pieces at the bottom, and a clear happens when the bottom line is cleared. The rules of Cascade Tetris apply, so that single pieces will fall if open. Also if two of the same colour blocks land on each other they will stick together, and if 25 such blocks stick, they will disappear.

The fifth world, Talitha, is perhaps the most annoying Tetris, Hot-Line Tetris. There are 6 specific lines in the gird, and these are the only ones that count. Lines can be cleared elsewhere but they won't count for points.

The last world, Unukalhai, is also the last Tetris, Fusion Tetris. In the bottom corner there is a single fusion block, and to that block single Atom blocks which fall must be connected to it. While this sounds easy, there is also garbage on lines above the fusion block making this Tetris more tricky than at first glance.

Different Minos can be chosen, though there is no difference between them. They might be a different colour and wear different hats, but that's it. That and their crazy names. Once the Mino and the world has been chosen the game is on. The objective is to reach a goal of points within two minutes. Each time the goal is met, you rise a rank. There are fifteen total ranks to rise. The first few goals are easy to reach, but the last few are extremely hard, if not downright impossible. Some more time should have been added to aid in reaching those last few goals. Two minutes is just not enough time. To get these points, different things are done. In general clearing lines will get you points, though in Fusion Tetris it depends on how many Atom Blocks you can connect. Different amount of points are given out for how many lines you clear at once. Clearing four lines is worth more than clearing one line at a time. But even if you only do the highest scoring available some of the harder ranks are still impossible. I played Fusion Tetris and at the end of the two minutes didn't even have enough Atom Blocks out there to rise the rank. If you don't reach the goal, you can still play on, so it's not like the game is over. You just don't rise the rank. When you do rise a rank, though, in some modes the whole board will be cleared. But there is no momentary pause, it just keeps playing through. So while you may expect a seconds break, there is none there.

The controls are fairly solid with one major problem. Pushing left, right, or down will move the piece left, right, or down respectively. The A button will rotate the piece clockwise, while B rotates counter-clockwise. To hold a piece you can hit R or L to move it into hold. If you hit it again, it will switch the piece in hold with the one you currently have. This can only be done once, so if you switch you can't switch back. The one major problem is the hard drop. This will automatically drop your piece where it is now. This is done either by pressing up or the Y button. This is a great feature, but I found myself using it accidentally too often. I wouldn't mean to, but the piece would just drop and I couldn't do anything about it. When using the hard drop there is an easy way to tell where it will drop. A ghost outline is given of where it will land, thus taking all the challenge out of lining up your piece. Another problem is with turning the piece. While it turns just fine, in most games of Tetris you can't continually spin it like you can here. Here it will keep spinning as long as you press the A button. Even in a situation where it shouldn't be able to move it can get out of spots it shouldn't be able to. Likewise it can get into some weird places it shouldn't be able to. It can even climb if you're good enough. If any of these things aren't to your liking you can always turn them off in options. You can turn off easy spin, ghost, next, hold, and a few other visual options which I'll get to later. This is all fine and good, but I don't find myself going to option menus to play around and usually just play with the default options. One thing you can't turn off is you can build outside the grid. You can actually build above it as long as it's not in the dead centre. This is very odd, as usually that would be a game over. Unfortunately, there is no option to change that.

There is multiplayer available for up to 4 players. This is a nice feature, and any of the 6 Tetrises can be played. Of course, this is slightly flawed. There are two types of multiplayer, race and knock-out. In race the idea is to be the first to rise a rank. This works just fine until the second round. When you press continue, the loser continues from where he or she left off. So if there are only 2 lines left for the other guy and you need to clear 10 it's not exactly fair. The other mode is knock-out. This is where each player is knocked out when he hits the top until there is only one person left. Garbage lines can be given if you clear more than 1 line at a time. The problem here is that the garbage has only one hole so it's easy to clear the garbage lines. Also if you put in 2 or 3 garbage lines at one the opening is in the same place for all three lines, making clearing all three lines easy to clear. There is a learning option available for beginners which teaches Tetris. Unfortunately, it only teaches you by giving you one new formation to learn at a time. A straight line, then perhaps a square. It's not very good for learning the game, but I actually gained a bit of strategy in this mode.

The graphics in the game are what you'd expect from a puzzle game. The colours are usually decent, though sometimes two colours can be confused. This is especially true with garbage blocks being mixed up with open space. This creates some major confusion in some types of Tetris where colour is important and garbage blocks are there to clear as well. Many times I landed on a garbage block I thought I could put my piece in. When moving the piece will fall smoothly as opposed to grid block to block. This can be turned off along with the bounce option. Bounce is just a small effect that the piece will bounce after a hard drop.

The game opens to a cutscene which at first I thought was impressive enough. Then I noticed that it actually wasn't so detailed. Further, I realised that although there were plenty of things, they were all single polygon things. So it wasn't as impressive as I first thought. The backgrounds in the game are boring, not very colourful, and they don't have any life to them. They don't grow or anything. The only noticeable thing is that when a rank is gained there's a flashy effect. Also once an effect after a rank gain happened which blocked my view in the middle of play. Obviously this is detracting.

The audio in the game is the worst aspect. The music in the game is horrible. I didn't want to hear it at all, and managed to block it out. There are two tracks for each level, which loop constantly. This wouldn't be a problem in most games, but in this game a single Tetris game could take upwards of an hour. The two looping tracks can get very annoying. In the opening cutscene there is voice work but it is extremely overdone, though I'm not sure how much blame I can give the voice actor given the story. The only decent part is the in game voice. It seems to be trying for a sexy female voice. It will just tell you what you're getting, single for one line, double for two, etc. It's not great, but it's rare enough to not be bad.

This game gets an N-Philes score of F.

In the end, this is still Tetris. We've all seen it before, and probably will see it again. The extra modes in this particular Tetris aren't really anything special. What is there that's new could be passed on, and the different options, excluding hold, create an all too easy Tetris. There are other Tetrises out there that do it better.

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