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Review by Marc Golding
January 21, 2004
Feel my courage! Taste my rebelliousness! I'm writing this review at the risk of sounding unprofessional, uncouth, irreverent even. I'm writing it based on years of Tetris-playing on the can.
So with a tip of the cap to delightful irony, I present to you, a well. Or really, a rectangle of white space, into which blocks of varying sizes and shapes can be dropped. Fill a horizontal line with shapes, from one side to the next, and you'll clear that line of matter. We are aware that blocks dropping from the sky in this way will eventually fill this well, this rectangle of whiteness. It's the line-making that prevents this from happening. As horizontal lines are made, they disappear, shifting everything down, keeping the well from filling to the top where a nasty game over screen just itches to manifest. Don't let this happen.
Yet, how do you fight fate? How do you keep rain from filling your mailbox outside when the hole in the bottom drains precious little? That's the challenge of Tetris. It's insistent, relentless. The bloody shapes just keep dropping: ''L'' shapes (facing both ways), ''T'' shapes, squares, slim rectangles (your godsend!) and little ''h'' shaped pieces that I like to describe as chairs that are missing their back legs. All the pieces can be rotated this way and that so that you can pack them as neatly into the bed of shapes you've collected, nestled below. For the love of god, pack neatly. Pack as if you're going on a long trip, whose destination is uncertain. If you are so skillful and fortunate as to pack a four-line-high stack, leaving a single, vertical, four-line-high space somewhere to drop the four-block-high rectangle -- you'll create what is known as a Tetris.
Managing this will net you big points, but it's risky -- if you keep stacking without trying to complete any lines just so you can come up with that long piece that gives you the four-liner you've been dreaming of, you may find yourself with a load dangerously encroaching on the well's top. And that rectangle may never come. Random as the game might pretend to be, I know it isn't! I know in my heart of hearts that sometimes it is with me, and provides the pieces essential to my game's perfection; and other times the cart is a malevolent sentience bent on my destruction, furnishing me with the same useless pieces over and over, forcing my hand at erecting the Leaning Tower until oblivion comes.
If you haven't been able to tell from my dramatics, get with it: Tetris is a compelling phenomenon. It's addicting, and it's unbelievably approachable, like all simple ideas done just right. While any fool can get into it, only a lucky bastard of a genius will keep the mailbox draining when the game speeds up and the water threatens inundation. I have had this game forever, and I still play it. The highest compliment I can pay it: When my bowels call, I go running for Tetris, and the toilet.
In that order.
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Most recent video game reviews written by Marc Golding
AMY (Xbox 360) [January 18, 2012]
Alone in the Dark 3 (PC) [November 24, 2011]
The War of the Worlds (Xbox 360) [November 23, 2011]
Bejeweled 3 (Xbox 360) [November 15, 2011]
Daytona USA (Xbox 360) [November 04, 2011]
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