Tetris Plus

"Same Old Tetris - New Tetris Twist"

Tetris is a game of thought, logic, and some hand-eye-coordination. Created and appearing on Nintendo way back in the day of 8-bit gaming, it's sapwned several sequels, rip-offs, and now, Tetris Plus.

-Visuals 7/10-

While the backgrounds of the Tetris arena are well drawn, they do little to take away from the fact that this is Tetris. You're eyes are only caught by the little old man running back and forth across the layers of blocks while a rotating spike platform lowers down ontop of you. There isn't any sort of variation to the block colors, and the only thing that seperates the levels themselves, is the backgrounds, from Egypt to the Incan Tombs...

-Audio 7/10-

Catchier than the original Tetris, most of the music will have you playing along in something of a drone. When you're concentrating on the game itself, then you're really not paying much attention to the music. Difference in music appear only when the stage changes, or you're getting too close to losing by letting your blocks stack up too high.

Sound Effects come in the form of crashing blocks, the lowering spike platform, and the occasional ''Oof'' of the little old man when he falls too far. Outside of that, there isn't much else to listen to, but again, when you're playing, you really don't pay much attention to it anyway.

-Control 7/10-

As always, you use the directional pad to move a block left to right on the playing field, and then press down to speed it's descent. Outside of that, and pressing any of the four buttons { Square, Triangle, Circle, X} to rotate the block, you're really not left with too much in terms of outrageous, or even complex control.

-Gameplay 7/10-

You have a couple of different modes here to choose from, which ups the gameplay value slightly. With one player, you play the classic puzzle mode of Tetris, as you try to remove blocks so that you're little explorer can drop down to the treasure below. Two player works the same way, except when you get multiple removals, you send the removed levels over to your opponents side to try and screw them over on the next pass. Edit mode is probably the best, in which you can create your own challenging puzzles to try and defeat against the clock. Over 100 level sin all awaits you to try and defeat through-out the one player mode, but after that, and once you have the game pretty well clocked, you can't do much else with it.

-Overall 7/10-

Tetris Plus isn't a bad spin-off for the Playstation, and it offers that classic gaming with a couple of interesting switches, mainly the little old man who runs around, and that you have to save. The graphics are par, as is the sound and the gameplay itself. Those looking for a fix on an old-game twitch, will find much enjoyment in Tetris Plus, and anyone who loves Tetris, won't be sorry that they picked this up, either for a rent, or a purcahse.

-Similiar Games-

Geom Cube
The Next Tetris
Intellegent Cube

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/09/00, Updated 11/09/00