Reviews
Remember Tetris? It’s back! In XBL Arcade form. That’s right, one of the all time classic games has finally put in an appearance on Xbox Live Arcade in an incarnation known as Tetris Splash – a game that interestingly combines Tetris with an interactive aquarium, all presented in HD.
So what do you get for your 800 points? Well, for starters you get a fairly comprehensive game of Tetris with all the modes and gameplay you’ve come to expect from the series over the years. I’m not going to waste your time explaining the ins and outs of Tetris, as chances are if you’ve never played Tetris before, you probably won’t be reading this review.
In single player, you can play either Marathon mode (go as long as you can) and 40-lines mode, where the objective is to clear 40 lines as quickly as possible. As is standard, you score extra points by clearing multiple lines at a time or by chaining up your line clearances for combos. All your favourite blocks return including the T, the L, the straight block, the square and those bastard Z blocks that are always so hard to place. Don’t you just hate getting one at the start?
Multiplayer is available either locally or over Xbox Live. You can play either in teams or, more commonly, free for all where you go up against 5 other players. It’s all pretty standard stuff, but some of the features we’ve come to expect from recent arcade titles are missing. It would have been nice to see camera support, for instance. There is also this annoying “feature” that when the host leaves or ends the game, the whole lobby shuts down rather than passing to a new host. This can adversely affect the online experience when you sometimes spend more time looking for a game then playing the game, only to have a game suddenly end when you finally mange to find one.
So, we’ve talked about the Tetris part of this game, so lets take a look at the Splash elements. The virtual aquarium, in the most basic sense, acts as the background for your Tetris game. Functioning this way you don’t really notice the pretty fish as you’re being inundated with blocks. However, it is possible to use the aquarium as a stand-alone screensaver where it really comes out to shine. Once nice feature is the way the aquarium ties into the main game, with the ability to add more fish to your tank by doing well in the game. There are several different tanks to choose from and a variety of fish breeds available so you can personalise the aquarium to your hearts content. Don’t expect too deep an experience though as this is no virtual pet software, your fish won’t die or eat each other. No maintenance is required – it really is just a glorified screensaver.
When you initially buy the game, you only get one style of tank and a handful of different fish. You need to purchase additional fish and tanks from the market place, costing up to 160 points each. This just seems a little steep to me for an XBL arcade game. If you want to own all the tanks and fish, you’re probably looking at doubling your purchase price – a very unfortunate decision.
In the end you are left with a very solid, if unremarkable, Tetris experience. The single player is as addictive as ever, but I guess it is somehow diminished by the fact that Tetris is already available on a variety of platforms – from PCs to mobile phones. It is hardly a unique experience and there really isn’t anything new on offer as far as the Tetris goes. The multiplayer is fun, but could have been programmed a bit better to make the experience more streamlined. The Aquarium is a nice feature, but will cost you significantly more if you want the full experience and it just doesn’t represent good value as a glorified screensaver. At the end of the day Tetris is as fun as it has always been, but until the developers bring something new to the table, do we really need to own another copy of it on yet another platform?
XboxZone Score: 7.1/10
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