Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Another bloody Tetris....
I hate to say it, but I'm already kind of bored of Tetris DS. I just got the game last week - the same day I got Metroid Prime Hunters and Nick brought Oblivion into my life - and, for a couple days, I was really enjoying it. Believe it or not, I haven't owned a real Tetris title since the Gameboy original. Tetris DS brings the grand total of Tetris games I own up to an astounding two. If you're keeping track, I have owned twice as many different Tony Hawk games. The reason: Tetris is always Tetris. Even though the Gameboy original didn't sport a nifty highest score feature or even colors, it has been enough to sustain me for the last 17 years. And now that I own Tetris DS, I have to ask myself why I spent $30 more on a game I already own.
Nintendo did try to at least offer a reason to buy this game for people who have already played Tetris to exhaustion. I admit they included enough modes and options that I should be grateful. However, only a handful of them are actually fun. Standard mode is just like the original Tetris. For some reason, there isn't the option to play endlessly when you first buy the game. Of course, if you aren't good enough to get 200 lines in Marathon Mode, I guess you won't really miss the endless option. I played this until I achieved the magic goal, and now I don't really feel like trying my hand at endless. Standard Mode also includes the god-awful 25 line challenge thing that's been around since Tetris was created. You know the drill - choose a difficulty and how much crap you want on screen - and play until you clear enough lines. I played this once, on the hardest setting, merely to get the notch on my belt. Needless to say, I won't be going back.
Unfortunately, Standard is still the most fun mode in this pack. Push and Catch are both pretty worthless. Push is a two-player only mode that plays just like normal Tetris, except your pieces come from above and your opponent's from below. Creating lines "pushes" your opponent closer to death. It's fun, but not nearly as fun as playing on a board that isn't constantly shifting height and pieces. Catch is a bastardized version of real Tetris. You rotate your ball of Tetrominoes and catch pieces that are falling. When your block is big enough it explodes. The fun only last for a minute or two, and then I find myself speeding up the falling blocks until my game ends. Don't think I'll be going back to that one any time soon.
Touch mode is completely worthless as well. You have this tower of Tetrominoes and you have to push them with the stylus to form horizontal lines. It plays like a slow, boring version of real Tetris. They do include a puzzle mode in this, but it won't exactly light your world on fire.
There's also a standard puzzle mode that is all kinds of broken. There's a random mass of blocks on screen and you are giving a handful of Tetrominoes to destroy it. The thing is, this is just a game of trial and error. There are a finite number of possibilities. You don't have direct control over you pieces. Rather, the computer places it in the best possible position. To further help you out, you don't even have the option to put down a piece unless it erases a line. So there are only about 10 different possibilities to each puzzle. Needless to say, you won't be stumped for too long.
Don't worry, Tetris DS isn't completely without worth. I haven't really tried my hand at Metroid Prime Hunters online mode yet, but Tetris DS easily trumps every other NDS game. Unlike Mario Kart, players are punished when they drop. Also, because the games are so quick, you don't have to wait long to get started. While I never play the two-player Push Mode or the four-player mode with items (which make the game significantly less fun) I do enjoy a standard two-player duel. It's not as good as Tetris Attack or Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, but Tetris is still a damn good two-player game. It's just a shame the variants are worthless and the one-player portion has lost its appeal so quickly.
I can't imagine I will be putting too much more time into this apart from the multiplayer modes. Meteos certainly had its own problems, but I did put in more than 20+ hours before I moved on to another game. Tetris doesn't even have the pleasure of staying in my NDS for a week. I have already moved it to its comfy home and replaced it with the far superior Metroid Prime Hunters. I really thought a puzzle game would be the perfect handheld title, even if it is twenty years old, but Tetris just doesn't thrill me anymore. Here's hoping Nintendo and Capcom get together and release a compilation of Puzzle Fighter and Tetris Attack on one cart. Or we should be prodding the developer of Meteos and Lumines to get away from the X360 and make some more portable puzzle games. Either way, unless your a Tetris whore, there's no reason to spend $35 on this game.
Nintendo did try to at least offer a reason to buy this game for people who have already played Tetris to exhaustion. I admit they included enough modes and options that I should be grateful. However, only a handful of them are actually fun. Standard mode is just like the original Tetris. For some reason, there isn't the option to play endlessly when you first buy the game. Of course, if you aren't good enough to get 200 lines in Marathon Mode, I guess you won't really miss the endless option. I played this until I achieved the magic goal, and now I don't really feel like trying my hand at endless. Standard Mode also includes the god-awful 25 line challenge thing that's been around since Tetris was created. You know the drill - choose a difficulty and how much crap you want on screen - and play until you clear enough lines. I played this once, on the hardest setting, merely to get the notch on my belt. Needless to say, I won't be going back.
Unfortunately, Standard is still the most fun mode in this pack. Push and Catch are both pretty worthless. Push is a two-player only mode that plays just like normal Tetris, except your pieces come from above and your opponent's from below. Creating lines "pushes" your opponent closer to death. It's fun, but not nearly as fun as playing on a board that isn't constantly shifting height and pieces. Catch is a bastardized version of real Tetris. You rotate your ball of Tetrominoes and catch pieces that are falling. When your block is big enough it explodes. The fun only last for a minute or two, and then I find myself speeding up the falling blocks until my game ends. Don't think I'll be going back to that one any time soon.
Touch mode is completely worthless as well. You have this tower of Tetrominoes and you have to push them with the stylus to form horizontal lines. It plays like a slow, boring version of real Tetris. They do include a puzzle mode in this, but it won't exactly light your world on fire.
There's also a standard puzzle mode that is all kinds of broken. There's a random mass of blocks on screen and you are giving a handful of Tetrominoes to destroy it. The thing is, this is just a game of trial and error. There are a finite number of possibilities. You don't have direct control over you pieces. Rather, the computer places it in the best possible position. To further help you out, you don't even have the option to put down a piece unless it erases a line. So there are only about 10 different possibilities to each puzzle. Needless to say, you won't be stumped for too long.
Don't worry, Tetris DS isn't completely without worth. I haven't really tried my hand at Metroid Prime Hunters online mode yet, but Tetris DS easily trumps every other NDS game. Unlike Mario Kart, players are punished when they drop. Also, because the games are so quick, you don't have to wait long to get started. While I never play the two-player Push Mode or the four-player mode with items (which make the game significantly less fun) I do enjoy a standard two-player duel. It's not as good as Tetris Attack or Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, but Tetris is still a damn good two-player game. It's just a shame the variants are worthless and the one-player portion has lost its appeal so quickly.
I can't imagine I will be putting too much more time into this apart from the multiplayer modes. Meteos certainly had its own problems, but I did put in more than 20+ hours before I moved on to another game. Tetris doesn't even have the pleasure of staying in my NDS for a week. I have already moved it to its comfy home and replaced it with the far superior Metroid Prime Hunters. I really thought a puzzle game would be the perfect handheld title, even if it is twenty years old, but Tetris just doesn't thrill me anymore. Here's hoping Nintendo and Capcom get together and release a compilation of Puzzle Fighter and Tetris Attack on one cart. Or we should be prodding the developer of Meteos and Lumines to get away from the X360 and make some more portable puzzle games. Either way, unless your a Tetris whore, there's no reason to spend $35 on this game.
// posted by Tom @ 9:33 AM 
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]