Game review: Tetris Ultimate for PS4

The other day I got a pleasant surprise browsing the PSN store for new games. Tetris Ultimate hit my nostalgia bone hard, so it became an instant buy as soon as I had some cash available.

You have to understand, Tetris was one of my first Game Boy games. It was the game I showed to my mother, who was always going on about games rotting the brain. But she liked Tetris so much that I had trouble prying the Game Boy from her at times. After moving back in with my dad, I showed him Tetris, and he became an instant addict as well. It’s a game with a simple premise and a wide appeal, and I’ve never met anyone who didn’t like to waste some time with it.

This Ubisoft update brings in several co-op and versus modes along with the classic single player mode. I wish I could say it was all good, but some of the modes were a little annoying. I don’t have PS Plus (yet), and so I can’t play online with other people. Ubisoft’s answer to this is a set of bots of varying skill levels. All of these are fine for a basic battle mode, but they have some problems when it comes to co-op. The problem is, they slam tiles on their side of the “matrix” without consideration of what my half looks like, or whether or not I might need the pieces they’re taking at the rate of one per second. So by the time I’ve finally managed to set up even one tetris, they’ve filled their entire side of the screen, and we lose the game around level two.

There’s also an ultra battle mode I’m not too fond of for the same reason. Any bot of any skill level will slam down pieces with ridiculous speeds, racking up points not for making lines, but for the speed of their drops. No matter how quickly I drop pieces, the robot will always have a higher score. So even if they stack all the way to the top of the screen less than a minute into the game, I can’t beat their score by the time the clock counts down. It’s kind of annoying.

I’m also not really fond of the challenges added to “celebrate” the 30th anniversary of Tetris. Make 30 Tetrises, play 30 games with a friends, and what not. Yes, I know it’s 30 years old. Stop rubbing it in.

But when it comes to the single player and basic battle modes, it’s still a great game, something I don’t think I could ever get tired of playing. And for 9.99, it’s not too hard on the wallet. So I’ll give Tetris Ultimate 4 stars. Maybe someday I’ll get PS Plus and be able to try the co-op with another human. But even if I just play the solo and basic battles modes, I can see getting a lot of mileage out of this one purchase. Obviously, I’ll recommend it to anyone who owns a PS4. It’s a great game to play in between rounds of the higher budget shooters, platformers, and RPGs.