Opinionation

Review time!

Tetris DS:
It's a revival of classic Tetris for the DS. No "bombs". No deattached pieces. Just 7 simple shapes and an urge to pack them in as tightly as possible.

There's a classic game that gets progressively harder and harder until it caps at an insane level 20 speed, a "push" mode where two players battle with the same stack from both ends (lol, it's so gay), a rotating-snowball thing kind of play method, a puzzle mode where you have to eliminate all lines with a small set of blocks with unlimited time, and a push the blocks with your stylus game that, naturally, sucks.

Anyway, the game seems to be an old school orgy. But beyond using sprites and animations and backgrounds and music remixes of old games, there's not much else. There's just so much of it, though. I mean, Tetris as a game is pretty unskinnable. So they had to do something I guess.

How's that saying go? How can I miss you if you're always around? I know Nintendo is more franchise-centric these days and using old intellectual property is easier and cheaper than having new stuff made up, but it smacks of such obvious fan service it makes me a little pukey.

They didn't even make new art for the franchises. All non-game related graphics are recycled.

The game doesn't feel rushed, but it feels incomplete. WiFi mode (which is perhaps the most compelling reason to get the game) just seems to be missing a bunch of game modes. They have 1 on 1, 4-way, and Push mode (that gay thing). That's it. 1 on 1 doesn't have items, 4 way does, and that's the only way it goes. Gone are "rivals" and "region" from Mario Kart DS. WiFi... well... it's just stunted. You have ratings instead of keeping track of a win-loss ratio (although it keeps track of how many wins you have... ???)

And the lack of pairing up means they get some horrible matchups. For instance: my rating was around 6700. But I just played a 4-way where not one of my opponents was over 4500, with the lowest at 3200. But I got a bad shuffle of blocks and was hammered on by the other opponents ganging up on me. I wound up around 6200 when it was done. Dropping 500 points in one match is kind of rediculous: this coming from a guy who've seen ratings before in Magic. And the items really do break the game. I mean, an item where all you get are long blocks? An item where, if used against you, you can't rotate any pieces for 10 seconds? BROKEN!

All in all, it's OK to get. But not one of Nintendo's finest.