Tetris Effect review

Reviewed on: PS4

Peace. An ephemeral and often temporary concept.

But the best description of what you feel playing Tetris Effect is peace.

To better set the mindset, I think the ideal is to start by saying I was never much of a Tetris fan. I had one of those 184-in-1 brick games and played every once in a while, but never got attached for hours on end like millions of people around the world. In fact, Tetris holds (or held, in 2011) the title of most ported game in the world: 65 platforms. So it’s no surprise that the game treats you as if you were already a veteran player.

For anyone reading who has never played Tetris, here are the rules: pieces fall on the screen and your mission is to fit them together to form a line. Each time a line is completed, it disappears, making room for the next moves. If the pieces stack up to the top of the screen, it’s game over. I don’t know which mechanics were introduced now and which have been part of the game for some time, but you can hold a piece and later swap it with one that’s falling and (this one seems to be from Tetris Effect itself) activate a special after clearing a certain number of lines that stops the pieces from falling, and they only fall when you say so. If you press down, the piece’s descent speeds up, and if you press up it drops instantly.

Mechanically, that’s all.

But Tetris Effect is ambitious. The name of the game, Tetris Effect, refers to a phenomenon observed where people who play for long periods start to imagine the pieces in everyday life, and some can even mentally picture the screen as if they were playing. The Tetris Effect is so powerful that people with severe amnesia, after playing and forgetting the fact, reported seeing pieces moving in their dreams.

Okay, I’ve talked about the origin, I’ve talked about the name, now the part that matters: what about the game?

It’s Tetris. I’ll start the climb here by saying the first big win was not trying to reinvent the wheel of a game so established in the lives and minds of millions of people. The game’s formula works to this day. You can pick up the original version of Tetris and it won’t be essentially different from what you’ll experience in Tetris Effect.

Then comes the audiovisual side

The Tetris effect is curious because it doesn’t bring you a memory. It makes you create a scene in your head. Both the visual work and the sound effects of Tetris Effect seem to have been made with that in mind. You are constantly bombarded by scenes and music that seem to want to collaborate with the effect and permeate your mind. I, personally, went through an absurd sensation of calm after the play sessions for this review. What surprises me most is that AT NO POINT did I feel irritated by the sound effects, or by visual clutter on the screen. This is important to mention because the effects of Tetris Effect, both visual and audio, are responsive: they react to your act of rotating a piece, moving, locking it in place or clearing a line. In other words, it’s all the time. And at no point did it seem a nuisance to me. I have no idea how they did it, but it’s sensational. By the way, still on responsive effects: after a certain point they stand out from the simple reaction to your actions and start to make up the stage’s melody and animation. Once again, the feeling here is spectacular.

For Tetris amateurs like me, Normal difficulty gets brutal after a while. But even after you’re crushed by a stage that went up to speed 9 without so much as a good-morning kiss, the overall feeling remains one of calm. It’s very hard to explain without handing the person the controller to play.

Bottom line: Is it worth buying?

Tetris Effect is coming out at the not very friendly price of R$129.15. I can safely say it is worth the investment. If you like being challenged and taking your brain to places it may not be used to going, go for it.

PlayStation 4 version