TETRIS EFFECT

Developer Monstars, Resonair Publisher Enhance Games Format PS4, PSVR

If videogames are, in some way, reflections of the world we live in, then turn the page and you’ll see one that takes a more realistic – to a fault, some would say – standpoint. By contrast, Tetris Effect is a wide-eyed idealist at heart. Its signature mode, Journey, takes in a range of sights, sounds and experiences, from humans to animals, cities to forests, mountains to oceans, land to space. It casts us as pioneers, on an expedition to discover what binds us.

Goodness, how pretentious it sounds. This is Tetris we’re talking about, right? Yes, and in some ways the brilliant puzzle game at its heart is arguably the least interesting thing about it. Or it would be, were it not for Tetsuya Mizuguchi applying his trademark synaesthetic spin. Tetris Effect rolls play and performance into one. Spin a Tetrimino and you’re sounding out a percussive rhythm, sending messages from ground control to a NASA satellite and back, or tinkling the ivories along to a jazz drummer’s hi-hat fills. And when the pieces start to pile up, you can zone out, a squeeze of the trigger slowing things down as you stack up as many lines as you can before demolishing the lot as the beat drops in once more. It represents opportunity for score-chasers and respite for panicked mistake-makers: another inspired piece of design.

Sure, the Effect modes can’t quite compete with the brilliance of that musical Journey: it’s still Tetris, but it’s no longer transcendent. Yet even here there’s a sense of togetherness, from the weekly rituals where all players contribute to a set target, to the avatars – from aliens to manta rays, Tetriminos to pterodactyls – floating above the Earth like neon angels. As the song on the opening stage reminds us, we’re all connected; the miracle of

Tetris Effect is that it makes you feel it.