| | | Tetris 2 is similar to Tetris in that you drop blocks down the screen, and can rotate them to fit onto your accumulated block pile. But you aren't trying to build complete rows of blocks this time; the blocks you're dropping are composed of different colors, and you're trying to land them on your pile so as to form rows or columns of three or more squares of matching colors.
This isn't something particularly unusual in block-dropping games, and it's nowhere near as intuitive and fun as forming rows in the first Tetris was; now you have to worry about matching the separate colors of the four squares in your falling block with your pile, and also you get blocks coming down in weird shapes: still four squares, but sometimes the squares aren't even connected to each other, and when one part lands, the other keeps going.
Another needless complication: once in a while, at least in head-to-head two-player, you get a set of squares with arrows in them that drop really fast. Argh.
And more: in addition to completing the level by making a certain number of 3-in-a-rows, you can also do it by clearing all of the starting squares that have a little dot in them.
The colors are garish and the music is nothing like the great Russian tunes in the original Tetris; I don't really remember what it was like aside from that. The back of the playfield has water in it that rises and falls, and the water level seems to affect or be affected by how well you're doing. In multiplayer, if you win a round, you get a little fish swimming around in your background. When blocks come into the playfield, they come in from the side, spinning, which is really distracting and needlessly confusing.
The control is all right--I mean, moving a block around isn't that hard--but if you have a block against a side wall, you can't rotate it; I found that really infuriating. |
|
|
| | | | Well it looks like you can't rotate pieces when they're against the side of the playfield in original Tetris, either, so maybe I should just hush. |
|
|
| | |