Tetris 4D

"Lean on options but heavy on gameplay"

Ah Tetris, after all these years I can still sit down and play for hours drifting into a dreamlike trance where I must build and build and build only to have it all destroyed.

Tetris 4D was a Japanese only release of the game on the Dreamcast that never saw the light of day in North America or Europe. It has been reviewed in Gamespot I believe and it didn't get the greatest review.

The game doesn't have a lot of features like say Tetris Worlds however unlike that game the gameplay is actually good. Tetris Worlds tried too many different things and in the process actually broke the game making not as interesting as the original.

In Tetris 4D (you wonder why on earth it's called 4D) you have the classic survival game where you last as long as you can, vs. a live opponent and multiplay with up to 4 players.

The graphics are serviceable and simple. The background colour changes as you get higher up in levels of gameplay. This happens in the survival mode. The blocks are made of small squares instead of being solid shapes. I don't find this as attractive as other Tetris games but who cares? When I'm in a Tetris trance it doesn't really matter.

The music is actually quite good, if you like electronica or techno. They basically take the most famous Tetris tune and spice it up quite a bit. The other songs on it are quite forgettable.

The gameplay is great of course. I'm not going to go into too much detail explaining it because you should really know. You have a well where different shapes fall into it from the top. The idea is to fit these shapes together, much like a puzzle, to create a solid horizontal line that runs from one side of the well to the other. Creating the line causes it to disappear. That's the gist of it really. You can do more advanced double, triple or even quadruple lines (that's called a ''Tetris'').

The vs. gameplay makes it a bit more interesting because as you create lines you send ''garbage'' to your opponent. This garbage causes your well to hike up. Though normally the garbage is a full well with one solid vertical line missing. Get one of those long Tetris pieces and you've got yourself an easy ''tetris'' to do some damage to your opponent. It's unfortunate that the game doesn't include a vs. CPU game but as long as you have a friend it can be fun.

In this version of Tetris the gameplay is standard fair but it does it well. If you don't already have it and don't mind hunting it down on ebay (or the net ;)) check it out. Tetris is addictive and fun. This beats the insanely impossible but terribly cute Japanese only Sega Tetris and the dull as dishwater Tetris Online. Everything is in English so obviously NO knowledge of Japanese is required to play. Besides, even if there was, it's still just Tetris. If you like Tetris, you can't go wrong with this one.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 06/02/03, Updated 06/02/03