Tetris Effect is a euphoric balance of intensity and serenity. Rarely do games manage either with stability, let alone perform both in concert. Tetris Effect's audio and visual assault is as powerful as its score-chasing quest for order and perfection, leaving the player overwhelmed with raw optimism and kaleidoscopic emotion. Tetris never required a sequel, but it now feels inseparable from Tetris Effect's compliment.
Tetris’ sin was being born perfect.
Since Alexey Pajitnov’s magnum opus made it to Game Boy, countless sequels and alternations have followed in its wake. Tetris II, Tetrisphere, The New Tetris, Sega Tetris, Puyo Puyo Tetris, and even two entries for Nintendo’s cursed Virtual Boy are among the dozens attempts to spin Tetris in a different direction. Capitalizing on Tetris’ success was inevitable, but it denied the obvious truth that Tetris never demanded modification.
Tetris Effect, directed by Takashi Ishihara and produced by (and largely associated with) Tetsuya Mizuguchi of Enhance, doesn’t seek to change the fundamentals of Tetris. Its focus is placed on embracing its Tetris effect namesake, where aspects of Tetris drift into conscious and unconscious cognition, and then breaking off the dial on the amplifier. Tetris Effect accepts the premise that humanity thrives on efficiency and organization and seeks, through the use of vivid imagery and exotic rhythm and noise, to expand the subconscious reach of Tetris.
That’s a lot to take in! What’s key to the foundation of Tetris Effect is that is still Tetris. Seven different tetriminoes fall down an empty vertical rectangle and challenge the player to forge lines that then disappear and clear space. The greater number of lines created at once, the higher the score goes. Combos and T-block rotations also award bonus points. Tetris Effect also subscribes to the carry rule, where one tetrimino can be banked and deployed as needed.
Tetris Effects’ (optional!) mechanical contribution is the addition of Zone Mode. After building the Zone meter with the natural progression of lines, time can be stopped and blocks can be brought down at the player’s will. Lines created will not count against that level’s line limit, creating an opportunity to dramatically increase the level score. Zone Mode can also be a life preserver, giving players the chance to catch their breath amidst a cataclysmic speed-12 shakedown.
Tetris Effects’ core, Journey Mode, moves the player through six unique Areas across three difficulties. Three-to-six individual levels are clustered into each Area, encouraging successive play for a greater score. All but one level demands the player complete 36 lines to move to the next level. Within each level are shifts in speed engaged after meeting fixed line counts, meaning that shit will always get extremely real at the same point. Difficulty options, as best I can tell, relax speed transitions and either increase or decrease the friendliness of oncoming tetriminoes.
Tetris is largely left as Tetris while the periphery expands and explodes around the playing field. Levels usually open with a light score authoring the background. Rotating tetriminoes issues a handful of percussive elements. Clearing lines and slamming blocks down builds more audio effects. As level speed increases or decreases, the backing music inflates and erupts until it completely detonates at the level’s completion. This process is both improvisational (with the player’s percussion) and controlled (with shifts and growth in music) and it completely changes the experience of playing Tetris.
A range of themes and melodies sweeps across the entirety of Tetris Effect. Stage 4, Jellyfish Chorus, splices voice samples into block rotation and escalates to a cascading piece of music. The streaking yellow city lights and piano keys on Stage 10, Downtown Jazz, could cite both Akira and Ridge Racer Type 4, and the climax of travelling through an urban city is a gorgeous treat. Stage 11, Spirit Canyon, is a tribal dirge lined with war drums and explodes with holographic horses marching around the screen. Stage 16, Celebration, summoned memories of Fantavision while Stage 25, Orbit, obliged its space station theme with chopped up astronaut transmissions as its rotation/percussive samples. Tetris Effect summons music, noise, and rhythm from a variety of sources and unites them all with a candid plea for optimism.
It’s difficult to relate the profound effect Tetris Effect’s swelling music has on the player experience. Citing Enhance’s official bio of Mizuguchi: [he] is committed to conceptualizing and developing multisensory synesthetic, next-level entertainment experiences through the power of emerging technologies. That’s what this is! That’s what Rez, Child of Eden, and Lumines have accomplished over the course of Mizuguchi’s career! Even the perilous and balletic action of Sega Rally Championship set control and zen as equal values. Mizuguchi’s influence on Tetris Effect surrounds Tetris in sensory expansion tank designed to merge muscle memory with trance-induced tranquility.
I got Tetris Effect in the middle of Stage 12, Jeweled Veil. I was idling along and making my lines without much of a fuss. I noticed an extra bass line every time I quick-slammed a block down on the grid. Then I recognized the sound I was making, my response, was becoming an integral part of the level’s song. My brain took over and dropped every remaining block in the rhythm of the beat, blurring the line between challenge and presentation. I was in Tetris Effect, or at least as much as I could be through virtual reality.
I played with entirety of Tetris Effect in PlayStation VR on a PS4 Pro with a great set of headphones. What happened to my mind after six straight hours of this was odd. I started denied personal ownership for dumb mistakes—it’s always the wrong J block—and constructed a half dozen metaphors for Tetris and existence. Our actions have consequences that experience allows us to either conquer or die and I am the product of all of my mistakes were a sincere thoughts I kept returning to as I rotated blocks in different directions with increasing level of success. When I was inside of Tetris Effect I felt it speak truth to the nature of reality. This is (probably) hyperbole that I will (definitely) regret not editing out of this text. But it felt genuine when I was in the moment.
I don’t think Tetris Effect is as potent in the absence of virtual reality. The game and transitions between music are the same, but it’s easier to disengage and drift off toward the nearest distraction. Virtual reality’s ability to erase the outside world is often cited as a negative, but, in the case of Tetris Effect, it feels essential. Without its requirement for total immersion I wouldn’t have felt the same sense of discovery. Good headphones, in the absence of PlayStation VR, should only be able to get you half way there. I can’t imagine playing Tetris Effect without either.
Tetris Effect also made me better a Tetris, a game I had not taken seriously in over two decades. When I began I was sheepishly logging two and three line combos, and any instance where I gambled for more threatened my survival. Fast-forward a day and speed 10 is no longer a threat because I only look at the bottom of the screen, with tetrimino outlines, and instantly know what to do with furious speeds. By accident I even figured out it’s possible to rotate and “walk” blocks across the surface before their placement was finalized, and that really blew my mind.
I found requisite lows as an essential part of the experience. Tetris Effect carries the option of instantly slamming a piece down with the touch of a button. Human beings make mistakes, and once or twice a game I impulsively place a piece in a very wrong and unintended spot. This is crushing! I screamed expletives inside virtual reality and the real world! Like any problem, however, there’s satisfaction in finding a safe and effective way out of it. Tetris Effect, as it happens, has an entire suite of side attractions that allow the player to dig their way out of different holes.
Effects Modes compose the extracurricular portions of Tetris Effect. Fifteen modes are divided into five categories tagged Relax, Focus, Classic and Adventurous, which are labels I would find preposterous had I not already bought into everything Tetris Effect was willing to sell me. Relax has comfort selections that combine ambient music with element-based stages, plus options for endless and more forgiving play. Score chases and combo runs are left to Focus’ methods of direct attack. Adventurous’ three modes introduce chaotic elements to the flow of Tetris. Classic’s four modes have an emphasis on efficiency and speed.
Mystery Mode, part of the Adventures Mode category, is where Tetris Effect takes a vacation with traditional Tetris rules. It’s either ideas that didn’t work out for (what came to be) Tetris Effect’s unique hook, or a WarioWare-style jaunt into madness. Effects labeled as positive or negative are inflicted upon the player at set intervals. In a single game the screen zoomed absurdly close to the field, turned completely upside down, or reduced every tetrimino’s block count from four to three. This was weird!
I wish there was a way to directly face off against another player. I understand the myriad reasons for Tetris Effect lacking a true versus mode (it doesn’t make sense with line count progression, it would collapse the musical cues, and it would destroy the rising action of each stage), but I was still playing Tetris and Tetris has always felt directly competitive. This is not what Tetris Effect has in mind (and there are also plenty of online rankings available) but its absence is felt.
It’s also super hard to stop playing Tetris Effect. The obvious part of this is a compliment; the game is engaging and (healthily) addictive. The negative part is that, at higher speeds, the travel time of moving my thumb up to the options button to pause the game effectively wrecked my rapidly developing game plan. The block position was already committed before I could hit pause. The speed at which Tetris Effect can move isn’t fully compatible with obligations to human life outside of virtual reality. This is a unique problem.
It’s an easy but apt comparison; what Tetris Effect does for Tetris is what Rez did for 3D rail shooters. It takes a genre that is solved, learned, and written-off and transforms the world around it until the final product is as much of an experience as it is a game. After I played Rez, its contemporaries in Vanark, Panzer Dragoon Zwei, and Sin and Punishment—all good-to-great games—felt vacant and ineffective. The challenge I loved was suddenly missing the extra sensory compliment I now needed. The difference is rail shooters were a moribund niche of gaming and Tetris is Tetris. It is unassailable.
Nothing can topple Tetris. Tetris Effect accepts this premise and surrounds Tetris’ core with audio and visual cues that tap into subconscious, kaleidoscopic emotion and draw raw optimism out of the player. This combination is now inseparable. It’s essential. I don’t want to play Tetris without Tetris Effect.
