TETRIS EFFECT: CONNECTED

Available now on: Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X| S Price: $ 55

Reviewed on: Xbox Series X

Out now.

OK, picture this for a minute: You’re at a rave playing a variety of experimental EDM. You look up to the screen, and there’s a mess of flashing strobe lights and one of those music visualisers. Someone hands you a controller, and that visualiser turns into a game of Tetris. Better still, you can play that brightly coloured Tetris with friends from around the world, no matter which console they’re playing on.

That is the Tetris Effect: Connected experience. The way the music and visuals react to how you’re playing the game is incredible. There’s so many different themes and music styles, that you go on a real journey, and it makes something that could get repetitive into an exciting and challenging adventure.

The multiplayer experience is satisfying and transforms the Tetris experience in ways you wouldn’t expect for a game as old, classic and revisited as Tetris.

The only problem is that the game is aggressively flashing and bright. If you have even the slightest sensitivity to light, this game can be hell without some serious precautions. All games warn that they might be bad for photosensitive players, but usually all but the most sensitive are absolutely fine.

That is not the case with Tetris Effect: Connected. The developers seem to have a personal vendetta against all epileptics and migraine sufferers. On a 75” TV with HDR brightness turned on, it became a transformative experience in the worst possible way. If you zoom in enough, turn down the brightness, turn off the backlight and put it in a tiny picture- inpicture window in a bright room you can actually enjoy it without feeling like you’re going on what I can only assume a bad drug trip feels like. But all the flashing lights just seem so user- hostile for such a sustained period of time, I’m amazed no one in the development process didn’t say “but hey, what if we made this less physically painful to look at?”

If you can get past that, though, this is such a beautiful and incredible puzzle game, and it’s a shame they didn’t make it playable for more people.

Bottom line: The best Tetris game of all time. Players with any kind of light sensitivity need not apply.