Tetris DS: C'mon, where's that long one?

As of late, I've been trying to purchase titles that have a wide variety of appeal. Since my daughter has taken an interest in my new Nintendo DS Lite, my game choices have come under heavy scrutiny by not only myself, but also by my wife. Especially after my wife walked in as the kids and I were attempting to find out what the fuss was over this "Hot Coffee Mod" in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. I’m only joking of course, but still it’s nice to pick up a game that I can enjoy playing with my daughter and someday my son. What I found in Tetris DS was fantastic. If you're like me and haven't played Tetris since the old Gameboy or NES versions, you're in for a treat.


Gameplay

Tetris is your basic puzzle game. There are different shapes of blocks that fall from the sky. These shapes are made up of 4 square blocks aligned adjacently. As these shapes fall you can rotate them to one of four different positions. When they settle into place if these blocks complete a horizontal line across the entire screen, the line is removed. The idea is to keep on removing lines before the shapes stack up too high. One they reach the top of the screen, the game is over. Every ten lines you remove the level increments, which means the blocks start falling at a faster rate, giving you less time to figure out a good alignment. When it comes to scoring, you're rewarded more for taking risks by removing more lines at once. That is, if you can remove two, three or four lines at a time, the score multipliers increase drastically. The risk is that you allow the blocks to stack up higher and higher while waiting for a specific piece to generate usually the long one, which can only complete a four line removal or "Tetris" as it is called in the game. The risk only increases on higher levels because the blocks fall so fast that it makes it so tough to even think about where your piece should be placed.

That is the standard mode of play. However, Tetris DS features more than one way to play the game. For instance there is Push mode. This mode faces you off against a computer or human player on the same field of play. One starts from the bottom and the other from the top. You still stack the same blocks, remove lines, and avoid reaching the top as in the standard game with one exception, there's no bottom. Instead you're piling blocks onto the bottom of your opponent's stack; all the while you're trying to push him down. However, you do have help. By completing line removals of two or more, you push the entire stack down (or up if you're opponent does the same) by that many lines. This heavily encourages high risk line removals to rescue your game from the brink or to put more pressure on your opponent. This is my favorite mode because besides competing on the same field of play as your opponent, there are more gameplay elements at work which add more strategy. For instance you have saved up for that big tetris (four line completion), but your opponent cleared away the last block on that column. So if you send your long block down there, it will go into the abyss and disappear, thus wasting the block. So do you wait him out or do you send it down and try to bait him into stuffing a block in there?

There's also a new mode called catch. This is where you start out with a rotating set of blocks. Instead of rotating the falling blocks, they instead fall down in a set alignment. You rotate your stack to catch them. Once you complete a 4x4 set in your stack, the music changes and you can blast away your 4x4 set, destroying any falling blocks or Metroid creatures in your way. The remaining blocks on your stack are either destroyed or sucked towards the center. The more you destroy, the higher the level increases and the faster the blocks fall. You lose the game when your health bar is depleted or when your sticky stack extends past the edge of the screen. Your health bar loses life when a block reaches the bottom without being caught, you rotate your stack into a block, or when a Metroid touches your stack. Overall, I don't really like this mode too much because it takes too long to develop. It has some good strategy too it, but it just starts out way too slow. You can speed up the blocks falling by pressing the right shoulder button, but you typically don't want to do it too often.

There's also a new mission mode set to the theme of The Legend of Zelda. This mode is set to the stage of the typical standard game. However, instead of the blocks falling faster, there's a timer on the bottom. You must accomplish certain tasks like complete a 2 line clear with a specific shape or something similar to that. If you succeed, all but a few blocks are removed and you move on to the next level. If not, several rows of staggered blocks build up, making the completion of the task even harder. As you complete levels, instead of the blocks speeding up, the timer speeds up. You fail when the blocks reach the top of the screen. This mode is a different twist on the standard game, however not only are the blocks relatively unpredictable, so are the tasks. Some are going to come really easily, while others are going to take a while to complete. It's a decent mode, though I don't like to play it too often because it seems a little too random to me. Not everyone might agree with me however, but that's just my feeling.


There's also a few other noteworthy modes. There's a puzzle mode where you place blocks in an attempt to clear the screen. They're kind of tough in a chess puzzle type of way. There are also a couple touch modes. One is a block tower where you remove lines of blocks by sliding the shapes into place. You can also tap them with your stylus to rotate them into position. You win when a cage holding some balloons reaches the bottom and is subsequently released. There's also a touch puzzle mode where you're tasked with sliding shapes in such a way that it clears the screen. In many of the puzzles you're not allowed to rotate the blocks as in the tower mode. Overall there are more than 200 puzzles to keep you busy. That's more than ChuChu Rocket. However, also like ChuChu Rocket, the puzzle modes are only complimentary modes. I'm not a big fan of the touch modes simply because they end up being more frustrating than anything. However, I'll get into that during the controls section.

The reason to own Tetris DS is the wifi multiplayer mode. You can play the standard game with one or three opponents (two or four players total). The idea behind the multiplayer standard game is similar to that of the multiplayer games going way back to the original Gameboy. Only in this version you can get powerups that can alter the battle. For instance there are Mario style items that either clear lines, give you I blocks, or can wreak havoc on your opponents by making their blocks invisible, unrotateable, or just have their blocks fall faster. In addition to the standard game, you can also play the push mode as well. All these games are very competitive and can really make what is a solid single player mode seem like throw-in modes for people who cannot play on a wifi connection.


Controls

Most of Tetris DS gravitates towards using the dpad and face buttons to move and rotate your pieces. One control aspect I really liked was you can speed up the decent of a block by pressing down on the dpad like the old Gameboy version, or you can make the piece fall immediately like the old PC version by pressing up on the dpad. It's a nice addition that factors in big during multiplayer matches, or even matches against a high CPU level. However, the touch modes aren't as solid. You slide a shape using the stylus, which is really simple and straightforward. However, if you wish to rotate a shape it's hard to tell which axis it's rotating on. It almost seems like it's random in that the block might rotate with a certain block as its axis, but that specific block in the shape isn't necessarily the one you clicked on. This becomes really confusing, and while I never noticed a timer with any of the touch modes, it seems as if these modes were only added to take advantage of the Nintendo DS's touch screen capability.


Graphics

The graphics in Tetris DS are nice, but not spectacular. There aren't a ton of special effects that really show off the Nintendo DS's capability. Graphically, it's on par with that of a Gameboy Advance game. Each mode has its own skin that depicts the theme of that mode. It's nice, but it's also not customizable. For instance, you could have a group of skins to choose from in the standard mode besides Mario (although it doesn't exactly work other modes). However, this is a puzzle game, and as long as the graphics don't interfere with the gameplay, one should be happy. That's the case here with Tetris DS.


Sound

Like the graphics the audio offers very few frills beyond the themes for each mode. Instead of the classic Russian themes I'm used to, Tetris DS replicates the music from it's famous slate of games like Super Mario Brothers, Metroid, Donkey Kong, and others. It's a nice change of pace, but if you're not into that type of music or just aren't nostalgic, it does little for you. One aspect of the audio that is good is how it changes depending on how close you are to losing (or winning in push mode). While it isn't as practical in Tetris as it is in a game like Meteos due to your awareness of the entire screen, it does escalate the sense of urgency if your back is against the wall. Overall like the graphics, the audio is acceptable even if it's not revolutionary.


Replay Value

Tetris DS has a tremendous amount of replay value. The standard game, popularized by the Gameboy version, was one of the most addicting games ever to be released. This was because you fought to break your high score despite the blocks raining down at an unbelievable pace. Tetris DS ups the ante here with a great push mode, and wifi mode. While the other modes like catch, touch, mission, and puzzle have bland gameplay or replay value, the standard and push modes more than make up for it. While it takes a lot of skill to compete against the power of your own brain and an increasing gravity constant, it can be even more rewarding when at the same time you're competing against other people or a skilled computer AI.

Overall, Tetris DS is a great puzzle game. While it's still just Tetris, it does offer more to the table if you haven't played the game since the old Gameboy version. The wifi multiplayer sets it apart from many other puzzle games on the DS. So if you have a broadband internet connection and are a fan of puzzle games, then you shouldn't avoid picking this up, even if you've already played Tetris.