By: Radical Entertainment / THQ Genre: Puzzle
Players: 1-4 Difficulty: Easy-Medium
Featured Version: Microsoft Xbox
Also Available For: PlayStation 2, GameCube, PC
Despite good old Nintendo being knobbers about the license back in its early days, virtually every system since the early 90s has had a version of Tetris, so when I was having my 'cheap Xbox game splurge' a few years back and saw a Tetris game was available, I thought why not? After all, any game with 'Tetris' in its name is a pretty safe bet, surely? Especially one called Tetris Worlds. It's a name that conjures an image of a vast and timeless game with lots of depth and options, and the more Tetris we can get, the better, no? There is a backstory, somehow. It is some sort of nonsense to do with 'unlocking the secret of the Tetrions' who were apparently a long-forgotten spacefaring species. The only evidence of them is the existence of special Gateways which orbit distant stars, and they can only be opened by those intelligent enough to unlock the secret of the falling blocks. There is more too, something about a mechanical species called the Minos and terraforming various planets, but does anyone really care?
Okay, that sounded harsher than I meant it but you know what I mean. As long as it plays a good game of Tetris it doesn't matter too much. If the story does tickle your fancy though, there's an intro and some cut-scenes and all that stuff, but most will go straight to the menu as I did. Here you'll find two options - Arcade or Story Mode. The former is pretty much what you'd expect it to be and supports up to four players at once, but the Story Mode was my first stop.
Here you can choose between six worlds of increasing difficulty which you have to 'colonise', which is of course achieved by playing Tetris well - i.e. you have to achieve a certain number of lines within a time limit. Each world hosts a different version, with normal Tetris reserved for Deneb, the first and easiest world. Subsequent worlds are Mira on which you play Square Tetris, Alundra which features Cascade Tetris, Antares which has Sticky Tetris, Talitha has Hot-Line Tetris, and the last world is Unukalhai one which you will need to master Fusion Tetris. Suffice to say, each of these variations on the theme is just that - it's still Tetris but a little variety never hurt, right? There isn't a great deal more to the game though.
That said, it is a little easier than previous Tetris games that I've played as you can now shove a block into the 'hold' box for later use if you don't have an ideal spot for it, and it's also very forgiving in terms of block placement since you can rotate or move a block left or right, even when it has reached the main stack. It is only placed permanently if you don't move it or hit the 'down' button, but you might not even need to take advantage of this very often though, as it takes a good while for the fall speed to really pick up anyway.
So, I guess the question to ask is this: Is there anything about this version of Tetris to make it worth playing if you already have a different version? To that, I would say no. The graphics are reasonable enough, though not as bright and flashy as one might hope for an Xbox game; the music is okay and you can even make a playlist from your own music CDs to listen to while playing; I do like the breathy female voice that confirms your line-clearing progress and some of the variations on the original game make for an entertaining diversion, but... I'm just not feeling it I'm afraid.
I think the minimum you should expect from any Tetris game is that it plays a fast, challenging game of Tetris - even my little £9.99 LCD handheld thingy does that - but that's the one weak point of this much fancier and more expensive (originally) version in my view. I imagine this made the four-player online contests a little boring as well, though I'm of course not able to check that myself now. It's not awful, I've quite enjoyed the time I've spent with it, but it should've been so much more finely tuned, all things considered. I'll stick to my little handheld, I think.
RKS Score: 5/10
Gameplay Video: here's a video of the whole of the story mode being played through by one of the talented fellows at Longplay Archives (check out their great channel here). It's the GameCube version but it's pretty much identical from what I can tell. Oh, and don't watch if you want to avoid spoilers!
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