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- Developer: SoMa Play
- Publisher: Ubisoft
- Genre: Puzzle
- Release Date: 17.12.2014
- Platforms: Nintendo, Playstation, Xbox, PC
- Game Supplied by: Xbox
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Anyone older than 25 will most likely of had a gameboy and have played Tetris more than they cared to admit, well its now on the Xbox One.
More and more puzzle games have made their way across to the Xbox One and boasting a huge 6 different modes you can relive those shape dropping moments and hours of fun.
Presented with a subtle background music of the original game that I have to admit it took me a while to realise as I was so engrossed in getting a great score.
Happily though music is not a big part of this game, the jazzed up music is very subtle and you can have a conversation with friends whilst playing or just give those wonderful shapes your full attention
My misspent youth of gaming is back!
This time though I have more options and between the marathon (original game) sprint (clear a set amount of lines as fast as possible and Battle an online party vs mode, clearly they are trying to make Tetris Ultimate a game for 2015 and not just a quick remake.
Those of you familiar with PC and Facebook games like Bejeweled will be familiar with these additional modes, essentially we are talking about smaller level challenges and faster big score rounds to beat friends scores. I like these as when you progress you get a sense of accomplishment as you go and not 3 hours of nonstop play just to lose it because someone distracted you (at least that’s the excuse I’m going with)
The thing I liked was you could do a solo play, a versus mode with a bot of varying level of difficulties available and some modes enable online vs mode. This is great to challenge yourself and push your shape dropping skills against (actually quite hard) bots or the best the Xbox live service has to offer.
Ultra mode is a real fast, 3 minutes to rack up a score as quick as you can which I really enjoyed however it has a limited replay appeal for me just like the Sprint mode as you will inevitably hit a wall of speed you cannot beat.
Unfortunately though many modes will keep you busy for a time however you will no doubt stick to 1 mode and master that.
Endless is only unlocked once you complete the marathon mode to level 15 just make sure your shapes are all in a row as its fast up at level 15.
Fundamentally the graphics are nice and realistically what are you expecting? They are geometric shapes in various bright colours dropping down into a rectangular channel.
Backdrops well in truth its a blue space looking backdrop moving slowly towards you, hardly inspiring however its the blocks that matter not the background.
Being able to check out your stats is nice and we always like to shout about our success, leaderboards are a nice touch and there is even a challenge feed however I just can’t see myself spending time in these areas for long.
Summary
If you have never played Tetris before chances are you have played something like it more than likely on your phone these days. In reality whilst I have a long-standing great memory of sitting there with a Gameboy hours after hour trying to get the best scores on the Xbox it was fun to start with but lacked that convincing gameplay I think most associate with console gaming over mobile gaming. What I mean by that is you can jump on your phone do a few levels whilst you’re waiting and keep coming back to it time and time again, on console though you tend to be there for a couple of hours and playing Tetris during this limited time of uninterrupted gameplay on my Xbox just didn’t quite cut it for me.
