Tuesday, February 19, 2019

Tetris 99 might be the best battle royale yet

Really? Do I really, honestly, truthfully, hand on heart believe that Tetris 99, a free-to-play spin on an age-old classic that stealth dropped on Nintendo Switch last week, is the measure of established behemoths such as Fortnite and PUBG as well as the hyper-polished, brilliantly playable current darling Apex Legends? Well yes, I do - partly because I'm still in that honeymoon period, partly because, well, it's Tetris. And it's just as smart and exciting a spin on that beloved formula as last year's Tetris Effect.

Mostly, though, I love it for the sheer audacity of it all. Tetris 99 is like a joke someone made on Twitter - I'm not even sure it's a joke that banged all that much, and probably didn't get more than half-a-dozen likes - that Nintendo and developer Arika then ran with and made absolutely shine. Arika knows its stuff when it comes to tetrominoes, of course, having crafted hard-edged classics such as The Grand Master series for arcade (revered as some of the best Tetris games out there according to the scholar and expert John Linneman of Digital Foundry) - and that expertise shines throughout Tetris 99.

So yes, it's just Tetris, but it's supplemented thoughtfully. The mechanics beneath the fundamentals are a little arcane, though I personally find that thrilling as specifics are slowly picked apart. The basics are easy enough - clear lines to send trash another players' way - with a few kinks of their own. Clearing a single line won't impact another player, and is more a way of tidying up - to do real damage, you'll have to clear multiple lines at once, with combos and t-spins helping you stack even more punishment up.

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from Eurogamer.net http://bit.ly/2Vcd0np
http://bit.ly/2DQ8CTS February 19, 2019 at 01:30PM http://bit.ly/2Bw1BXa

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