Binge Gamer Review: Tetris Party
Review: Tetris Party
Tetris, the greatest game ever created, has finally hit the Wii. With the Xbox 360 already having two different Tetris games (three counting Japan), it is quite a puzzle why we haven’t already seen a release at the least via Virtual Console. To make up for all this lost time without Tetris, Hudson has come through and brought a WiiWare version of the game for 1200 points, bringing with it a lot of bells and whistles.
I don’t think it is necessary to review the game of Tetris itself, we all know its addicting qualities, and this game is no different, rather it actually has the ‘classic’ gameplay, but so many more modes to distract you, including online play. First, let’s focus on what they bring for single player. Here you have the Marathon mode, giving you the option to play endlessly until you die, or until you reach level 15 (150 lines).
The game plays as it should, my only qualm being no custom music support using the SD card. Tetris is one of those games that deserves this support more than any other game, especially when something like Excite Truck even sported this feature. One other problem I find is the controls, be prepared to whip out your ‘Classic Controller’ because playing with the Wiimote is not recommended. It serves it’s purpose until you need to use the “hold” button, when you notice how awkward it is to have to hit the ‘A’ button to pull the move off in the middle of gameplay, where as the classic controller defaults this to the left and right shoulder buttons, so you don’t have to move your fingers around (really necessary in speedier rounds).
Other modes of play include Field Climber, Shadow, and Stage Racer. Field Climber proves to be just a plain fun game. You have an extremely cute stick person (his sounds are too amusing) that needs to make it to the top of the screen by having you build a set of stairs with the tetriminos. These three modes are available for same screen multiplayer, but I would not say they compete with classic mode as far as a versus game is concerned (maybe I am too much of a purist though).
Shadow and Stage Racer are not as fun as Field Climber, however they prove to be very helpful in honing your skills in two ways. With Shadow, you have to fill in blocks to match a picture in the backround, thus rewarding those who really think out their moves by keeping a very close eye on your upcoming pieces. This mode doesn’t allow the use of the ‘hold’ button, but does give you a limited number of “Skips” to change out the current piece you are given. 
Stage Racer forces you to learn which way you can move the tetriminos when in very tight spots (if you are into T-Spins, this mode should be very easy for you). You start at the top of the screen, moving down many screens until you reach the goal, with all sorts of other pieces blocking the way making you twist and turn as you race down to the bottom.
A mode that deserves a mention is the Beginner’s Tetris, because it’s ..cute (I know, I’ve used the word cute twice already.. but i can’t help it.. this is just too cute). Blocks are huge, and come in much smaller shapes (ie the “L” tetrimino is just a corner, there is no long tetris piece, only three blocks). You can set this mode so the pieces are regular size, but if you do that, just get yourself into a regular marathon mode and practice! Otherwise, this should really be labeled “Kids Mode.”
Saving the best for last, the Nintendo Wi-Fi battles. You can play with friends or you can play against random people. The biggest plus to this part of the game is the inclusion of a “Items” match, in which six people go at it with blocks you can clear to give you the option to either help yourself, hurt one enemy, or hurt everybody. I went ahead and took a screenshot of a .pdf file Hudson offered that explains what the items do, so here is a nice cheat sheet until you are familiar with these:
The online battles I have had so far, are completely lag free. There has been a time when I was unable to start a match, but that is fine as long as I wasn’t cut out from the middle of the game. Playing with the items on or off, gives you 5000 points for each as a starter, every battle you play, you can lose or gain points, and that is how they rank you on the leaderboards. They offer leaderboards not only for online battles though, basically every mode you play in will offer a leaderboard, with the ability to connect to the Nintendo Wi-Fi and update (however I noticed they limit the amount of times you can check the leaderboards within a certain time, I have already received messages telling me to wait 10 minutes before checking again.. very lame). 
A very neat feature that I feel deserves a mention, is while waiting for a match to begin, you can play Tetris to practice, with or without items.
Lastly is a News section for whatever Tetris Online/Hudson wants to update you with, and a Tournament mode (which though hasn’t started as of me writing, I read on their official site, there is one coming December 1st).
In the end, this game is well deserving of a purchase, and really beats out the current Tetris competition (Tetris Splash and Facebook Tetris). At the price and amount of modes offer, if you even were considering a purchase, I would go ahead and take the plunge.
((Note: Not reviewed is the Wii Balance Board as a controller, as I don’t have a Balance Board))
