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I’ve experienced some serious Dr. Timothy Leary-style dreams lately. In these nocturnal visits, giant blocks with eyes talk to me and guide me, while shapes of light fall from the sky. I should be frightened by their unblinking stares, but as the shapes tumble to earth and join together, the blocks encourage my efforts and I feel at peace. You, too, can experience these freaky nighttime visions after spending as much time with THQ’s Tetris Worlds as I have – a colourful, wondrous world of puzzle pieces and unity, taking the pure virtual smack of Alexey Pajitnov’s original Tetris design and leveling up the addictiveness until it hits your system with the raw force of a Main & Hastings speedball. Now, Radical Entertainment and THQ have imbued Tetris Worlds with a backstory involving planet gateways, sentient mechanical beings called Minos who use the blocks as gateways, an unstable star, and six Mino players sent to six different planets to unlock the gateways to save the species. Real heady stuff. After watching a hilariously campy opening movie explaining the reason as to why dropping blocks is key to the race's survival, the Start screen appears and it’s here where the fun truly begins.
There are several different kinds of Tetris available here: Sticky, Cascade, Square, Hotline and Fusion. My personal favourite, Cascade, will be familiar to anyone who has played Super Puzzle Fighter or Columns, but the other variants are just as fun and addictive. Story and Arcade modes are just the beginning, however. Where Tetris Worlds really shines is taking the competition online with Xbox Live. With full statistic tracking, competition level matching, ranking and career stats, it’s the best way to play and is a great addition to an already great game. Dealing with quitters is easy enough – if a player quits within the first ten seconds of a game, it won’t register as a loss, but if quitting after 10 seconds of play will result in a loss mark on your record. If you’re not into a seriously competitive game of Tetris, but still want to play online, you can enter the Lounge Play area where you can just fill the block well at your leisure – any level stats here won’t upload to the server due to the dialed-back nature of the play. Tons of options are available to make your Tetris Worlds experience as easy or as difficult as you like. Ghost blocks show you exactly where your block will fall, Hold allows you to hold a piece for later use, you can Bounce pieces off each other, see the Next 6 pieces upcoming, and more. Tetris Worlds is one of the best translations of Tetris that I’ve ever played. Even the Minos storyline started to grown on me after a while, and the amount of new Tetris games included hold their own against other puzzle titles on the market. The Xbox Live support is just the icing on a particularly tasty cake. So if you’re a Tetris fan, this is the version I recommend you check out – just remember my warnings when your dreams take a weird turn.
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