TETRIS EFFECT

[Stelistu]

You may have played many versions of Tetris, but you’ve probably never played one like Tetris Effect. The latest iteration of the falling-block puzzler comes from Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s Enhance Experience and combines music, sound, vibration, and visuals into something that becomes almost transcendent. It does have a late-game difficulty spike that’s worse for those that aren’t playing in VR, but this is still a masterfully presented new entry in a long-running series.

The main campaign of Tetris Effect is Journey, an engrossing series of connected boards each with their own diverse art style, music, and ruleset. Each board is unique and I was constantly surprised by what they offered. One might see you starting underwater as a beautiful particle-effect whale swims around you, while the next will be a desert landscape with a meandering caravan of camels that, halfway through, transitions to a realistic-looking version of the moon complete with an astronaut tooling around in a lunar vehicle. Some don’t have music at all, instead opting for a soundscape drawn from the sounds of wind. Another had me inadvertently creating a jazz jam with the sound effects created by rotating, moving, and dropping pieces.

Don’t be fooled by the focus on music and mood though - Tetris Effect can be punishingly difficult. There’s no hard-and-fast rule to how each stage will play: some are traditional in that they start off slow and ramp up after you clear a set number of lines, while others start blisteringly fast then slow all the way down to let you regain your composure, only to suddenly speed up again without warning. This constant fluctuation in speed and difficulty at times feels at odds with the often meditative presentation of Tetris Effect’s stages. The ability to rotate a piece several times after it lands and the return of the hold queue, with which you can substitute a Tetromino once per turn, give you several ways to react but it can still feel cheap to suddenly see a board speed up 5 or 6 levels, slamming blocks into positions and ruining my carefully laid plans.

If you find yourself in a pickle, you can activate Tetris Effect’s trippy new time suspending Zone mechanic. Zone accrues as you play and activating it pauses the action, allowing you to clear lines for a high-score combo or to set up your board without the constant threat of falling blocks. Zone may not be as revolutionary as something like the ability to swap out a Tetromino for one in your hold queue but I enjoyed it for the strategic possibilities of stacking a board as high as I could and then quickly working to clear it as the timer ran down. Early on I’d horde my Zone until I found myself in a jam, but a quick look at the leaderboards convinced me to use it as often as possible.

Who would think that a new version of a simple game like Tetris could deliver such a thoroughly absorbing experience? The merging of time-tested gameplay with the synesthesia-inducing sound and visual design of Tetsuya Mizuguchi creates something you’ve likely never experienced. While Tetris Effect’s diverse and beautiful presentation can sometimes literally get in the way of the gameplay, this is proof that even after 30+ years, Tetris can still feel fresh.