![[H]ard|Forum](/styles/hardforum/xenforo/logo_dark.png){kind=logo}
Slartibartfast
Supreme [H]ardness
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2004
- Messages
- 7,280
I picked this game up a few days ago and have had a fair amount of time with it. I was suspicous about it, as most recent tetris releases have been, well, crappy. Which is odd, really: the game is so incredibly simple, yet they keep trying to cram features into it, which only hurts the gameplay. Tetris DS has been getting pretty good reviews, so I thought I would give it a chance.
The Good
Lots of gameplay modes. The catch mode is probably the most unique: you control a single tetris square (one little block), while various normal tetris pieces come down at you. The goal is to get the pieces to stick to you, and make squares that are at least 4x4, all the while avoiding the various metroid things. It definitely takes some readjusting.
There's also the push mode, where you are playing on the top screen and your opponent the bottom. The well is continuous, and there are two single squares pre-set in the middle. You each are sending pieces towars the middle, but if they don't hit anything they just go all the way by. As you make lines, the groups of pieces in the middle are pushed towards your opponent.
There are a few other modes, like the standard competitive mode, and a weird touch mode that has you sliding pieces around.
Also, having it internet-enabled is pretty damn sweet.
The Bad
Well, guess what? They couldn't just leave the formula be. All they needed was NES/Gameboy/SNES style mechanics and it would have been great. This is my single biggest complaint with the game: as long as you are mashing the rotate buttons, the piece won't sent down. If you're playing the Marathon mode, once you reach about level 8, the pieces really don't drop - they move so fast that they just appear in the middle of the screen, and you have to start mashing the button to rotate it, and then you can slide the piece back and forth. I think this is totally lame, because if there is a high enough stack of pieces you can't get the block over them and are forced to place it somewhere in the middle. However, it also makes the game much, much easier. Last night I had 275 lines, with only a few built up, when I just quit playing. I could have easily reached 350 or higher. This was unheard of in earlier versions. Once you reach that level 8 mark or so, the game simply stops changing, because of the whole, block-appears-in-the-middle thing.
Additionally, given the two screens, you would think that you'd have plenty of screen real estate, right? WRONG. When playing Marathon (ie classic tetris) the top screen shows you levels from "classic" nintendo games - clearing lines causes things to happen, like mario moving through the level, or link running around killing stuff. Of course, this is completely useless because you can't really watch once you get to level 6 or so. So there's half of the screen right there. But then the well itself only uses maybe one third of the bottom screen - the giant picture of mario is bigger than the playing field. Even when playing against an opponent, one screen shows their well, so your well always feels uncomfortably small.
Finally, in addition to letting you store a piece, the game shows you the next six pieces that are going to fall. This made sense in the N64 Tetris, when you were trying to make 4x4 block. But honestly I think this takes some of the fun out. I used to play tons and tons of competitive tetris on the snes in college, and most of the fun was pushing the limit of how long you could go, waiting to get that one line you needed to make a tetris. Now there's a lot less mystery and challenge to it.
Final Thoughts
Still, it's tetris, and I keep coming back to it. I do have a lot of gripes with the game, but I'm still playing it. I just wish they would stop messing with the formula and just let us play simple, classic tetris. Tetris DS is a decent title - there are a lot of tetris games that are worse, but there are a lot that are better. 7.5 / 10.
The Good
Lots of gameplay modes. The catch mode is probably the most unique: you control a single tetris square (one little block), while various normal tetris pieces come down at you. The goal is to get the pieces to stick to you, and make squares that are at least 4x4, all the while avoiding the various metroid things. It definitely takes some readjusting.
There's also the push mode, where you are playing on the top screen and your opponent the bottom. The well is continuous, and there are two single squares pre-set in the middle. You each are sending pieces towars the middle, but if they don't hit anything they just go all the way by. As you make lines, the groups of pieces in the middle are pushed towards your opponent.
There are a few other modes, like the standard competitive mode, and a weird touch mode that has you sliding pieces around.
Also, having it internet-enabled is pretty damn sweet.
The Bad
Well, guess what? They couldn't just leave the formula be. All they needed was NES/Gameboy/SNES style mechanics and it would have been great. This is my single biggest complaint with the game: as long as you are mashing the rotate buttons, the piece won't sent down. If you're playing the Marathon mode, once you reach about level 8, the pieces really don't drop - they move so fast that they just appear in the middle of the screen, and you have to start mashing the button to rotate it, and then you can slide the piece back and forth. I think this is totally lame, because if there is a high enough stack of pieces you can't get the block over them and are forced to place it somewhere in the middle. However, it also makes the game much, much easier. Last night I had 275 lines, with only a few built up, when I just quit playing. I could have easily reached 350 or higher. This was unheard of in earlier versions. Once you reach that level 8 mark or so, the game simply stops changing, because of the whole, block-appears-in-the-middle thing.
Additionally, given the two screens, you would think that you'd have plenty of screen real estate, right? WRONG. When playing Marathon (ie classic tetris) the top screen shows you levels from "classic" nintendo games - clearing lines causes things to happen, like mario moving through the level, or link running around killing stuff. Of course, this is completely useless because you can't really watch once you get to level 6 or so. So there's half of the screen right there. But then the well itself only uses maybe one third of the bottom screen - the giant picture of mario is bigger than the playing field. Even when playing against an opponent, one screen shows their well, so your well always feels uncomfortably small.
Finally, in addition to letting you store a piece, the game shows you the next six pieces that are going to fall. This made sense in the N64 Tetris, when you were trying to make 4x4 block. But honestly I think this takes some of the fun out. I used to play tons and tons of competitive tetris on the snes in college, and most of the fun was pushing the limit of how long you could go, waiting to get that one line you needed to make a tetris. Now there's a lot less mystery and challenge to it.
Final Thoughts
Still, it's tetris, and I keep coming back to it. I do have a lot of gripes with the game, but I'm still playing it. I just wish they would stop messing with the formula and just let us play simple, classic tetris. Tetris DS is a decent title - there are a lot of tetris games that are worse, but there are a lot that are better. 7.5 / 10.
I'll let you know when I do, probably by this weekend.