THE GOOD:- This is Tetris, everyone knows Tetris
- The new features they added
- MPlay, for the first month or two
- Everyone can play this!
- New game styles
THE BAD:
- Top screen isn't utilized too well
- MPlay, after the first month or two
- New game styles
SUMMARY:
This game is all about the nostalgia!
As such, you will either love it or hate it. Let me explain:
At first, this game will be fun simply for the fact it's Tetris. Pick it up and play, and you'll soon find yourself pleased by the addition to hold a shape until you want to use it later. You may also appreciate the fact you can see the next five shapes and plan ahead. The little shadow at the bottom, indicating where the current piece being played will fall, might also be appealing.
You'll continue to play as the game speeds up, aiming for higher and higher scores, potentially competing with friends, until you reach a point and you'll start to want more.
But don't fret; Tetris DS won't let you down just yet!
You'll then explore the different puzzles that come with the game. Touch puzzles with blocks piled on top of each other topped by a cage, with the objective of manipulating the blocks to bring the cage down. Puzzles limiting how many blocks you can use, or choosing the correct order and orientation of blocks to clear a screen. However, these puzzle games stray too far from the nostalgic feeling, and they most definitely won't be enjoyed by everyone.
What you'll want to look at is multiplayer, either online or with friends who have a DS (up to 8 players can play off one game cartridge.) For the more amicable characters, you may want no more than to race against an opponent to see who can clear more lines faster. For the more competitive, and the more challenge oriented, you'll want to "push" games.
These two multiplayer games can work in either one of two ways. Either two players play on one screen with a base line, and clearing lines pushes this base line to your opponent's side, till one player pushes it to the bottom of the other's screen to win. Or, up to 8 players can "battle" each other, and every time you clear some lines you can select which opponent you would like to add a bunch of random lines (usually 1 less than the number of lines you clear, so if you clear 4 lines you can add 3 to a selected character.)
This is where Tetris DS shines most, followed by no small margin with the easy playability Tetris has – if you want to be passing the DS around to your friends to see who can clear the most number of lines fastest.
You may or may not be wondering, this is all great, but what do you use the second screen for. In multi-player and in the puzzles, it's always being used. But in the single player, it attempts to add to the nostalgia. The top screen will have a theme from any one of a number of other Nintendo games (Mario, Metroid, etc) with music from those games playing. You might find this cool at first, but after a while it gets as annoying and old as playing simple Tetris does for too long. Don't get me wrong, I love the old simple Tetris, everyone does. But we've come to expect more from video games today, and while Tetris DS does offer more (especially with its multiplayer) this game gets repetitive and old fast.
This is a nice game to have if you're a Tetris fanatic, or if you love to show off the DS and try and get non-gamers or older former-gamers to play it. Alongside brain age, for my non-gamer friends, Tetris is one of my most played games. As far as playing it myself for fun, or for some online fun, I'd suggest you look elsewhere. Tetris DS sells for the price of much nicer games, like the New Super Mario Bros, which is also nostalgic to play and offers new twists on the classic.
If you can find it for 20$ USD or less, maybe even up to 25$ USD then this game may be well worth its price. Till it begins to cost as little, I'd just borrow it from a friend or something. It might be good for you, but in my opinion this game is a risky buy; You'll either love it or hate it.
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