Cover Art Video (Real Player) Intro Cinematic

Type: Puzzle

# of players: 1

Levels:

Toshiba Pack-in

If you think you've mastered Tetris then think again! Now there's The Next Tetris, a revolutionary twist on the classic puzzle game. More features, more challenging, and more addictive than ever. The Next Tetris - it'll blow your mind!

Features:

• Multiple play modes, including Classic Tetris and The Next Tetris
• New "breakaway" and "sticky" Tetris blocks
• Special visual and gravity effects

Tetris. By now everyone has at least heard of the game or has been living in a cave for the past 15 years or so. It's the game that has spawned seemingly endless clones and variations, and you could say it basically established the entire genre of puzzle games. All this because it's a good game at its core - simple, addictive and increasingly difficult. Unfortunately The Next Tetris doesn't do anything new to draw you off of your GameBoy for a quick game of Tetris. There's not even a 2 player mode.

Before you ask, no you can't buy this game in stores - and be glad you can't. As a freebie it's perfectly fine (considering there are also improved demos of T3K and Merlin on the disk), but you'd do better to spend your $20-$30 on IS3 or better yet the upcoming Bust-A-Move 4 if you're really itching for a puzzle game. The Next Tetris is about as uninspiring as it gets. The visual "package" consists of boring black backgrounds with simple colored bricks and plain menus. The only halfway-decent graphics are the opening FMV (wow!) and the way bricks of the same color melt together. Aside from that there's nothing that you couldn't have done back on an NES.

Music and sound effects are good for the most part. High-quality, clear audio is definitely a plus, but the music itself is (again) uninspired. Some techno-esque renditions of classic Tetris songs are about as interesting as they get. Don't even bring up the song that says "Tetris" about a million times (what game am I playing again? Thanks for the reminder).

The game controls well for the most part, not that Tetris is a game that requires complex button combinations or things of that nature. It is a bit touchy when you hit down on the d-pad to lower the bricks faster (a more gradual decent would be nice), but luckily it's forgiving in that you can move the bricks around a bit once they've landed.

So basically you have game that you could get on any other piece of silicon ever created, but this time it's on NUON. I'm thinking Toshiba picked this one as a pack-in because it's easy to play with the remote (since the player doesn't come with a game controller in the box). Bust-A-Move 4, please save us from these lame ports of mediocre puzzle games!

Graphics - 3

I can't imagine graphics getting any more plain and boring than this. A few decent touches keep it out of the gutter completely though.

Sound/Music – 6

Nothing to write home about, but it's better than Ballistic.

Control – 7

The bricks fall too fast when you hit down on the D-Pad, but luckily it's forgiving when they land.

Fun Factor – 6

Hey, there's no denying the fun of Tetris. Too bad it's been done a million times before. And where's the 2 player mode?

Overall (not an average) – 45%