Review: Tetris

Tetris is a very disappointing game. From the outside, it seems to promise the best game ever, with thrills, spills and excitement on levels that people on high market drugs could not claim to experience. The reality is far, far bleaker and much more of a let down.

FACT: The funnest thing to ever come out of Russia was Rasputin.

The impression from the box art gives the player the feeling that they will be risking their very survival dodging blocks falling from the sky while battling it out amongst other relentless evil blocks willing to destroy your hard work. Turns out there is no first person mode here. Heck, there isn’t even a gun to the right of your screen. The lack of health and ammunition is also another factor on this rather dull game, and instead you find yourself trying to do something as mediocre as trying to arrange the blocks into lines like some sort of diligent office worker.

Games like Portal have shown us what puzzle games can do, and the lack of GLaDOS, turrets or even a hint of cake or clever metagame writing are further blights upon this sadly wasted potential of a masterpiece. When you think of all the things that could have been implimented such as co-op play, respawning bad guys, heck, you’re even hard pressed to find any sort of physics here, other than the usual staple of gravity. I wanted to see some form of spark and innovation, but instead the only goals the game seems to impose on you is a high score table, and perhaps to keep the screen looking tidy.

So overall then, Tetris is an epic failure. It’s such a shame to see what could have been a fantastic first person shooter become just another collecting and sorting game that we’ve seen a hundred times before. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would prefer Tetris to Portal or Team Fortress 2.

But at least there isn’t any DRM, and for that it gets:
12%

This review inspired by IGN