Completed Journey Mode on Expert difficulty. It's really amazing the difference that this exceptional presentation can make to the Tetris experience. Although largely the gameplay here is 'just' basic Tetris, the use of complementary graphical effects and - especially - music makes the game a hugely engrossing experience (and this is without having tried its VR capabilities, which can surely only enhance this further).

The one significant gameplay change is the introduction of "the Zone", a mode that can be triggered by filling a meter from clearing lines, which temporarily pauses new tetrominoes from dropping until you decide where to place them, while collecting all cleared lines during the mode together, to be cleared all at once when the "Zone" time has elapsed, allowing for more than the usual four lines to be cleared at once, with generous bonus point potential. This brings a nice strategic twist as you decide when the best time to trigger "the Zone" will be.

The game has a main 'campaign' ("The Journey") progressing through levels with a wide range of different musical/graphical sequences, but beyond this, there's a nice range of customisable game modes - from classic 'marathon' through to interesting twists such as targeting specific 'infected' blocks for bonus points - and potentially there's a huge amount of gameplay time to come from this, though ultimately I'm satisfied with my time with the game after completing The Journey on Expert and attempting each of the custom game modes a handful of times.

Reviewed on Dec 17, 2022


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