Tetris Party by Hudson is a pretty darn good re-envisioning of the godfather of all puzzle game Tetris on Nintendo WiiWare. Now this has a pretty good version of the original Tetris but it has a metric ton of new modes to play that still remains true to Tetris. It sort of reminded I was reminded of Space Invaders Extreme or Pac-Man Championship.
The graphics were clean but It didn't feel Russian enough for me. I was waiting for the Nutcracker suite and the Kremlin in the back ground.
Now where the game really shines is the competitive game play against another player. The verses modes either in-room and online was just as tight as Capcom's Puzzle Fighter or other competitive puzzle games. When you clear Tetris lines space up from the bottom moves your opponents block up towards the top of the screen and there is a bunch of new attack items that can screw up your opponent. My favorite attack item has you point at the screen with the Wiimote and shoot individual blocks at the other player's screen. It really messes up their plans if you block their Tetris plans. You can play with four players in room and up to six players online via the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. The online matchmaking was pretty fast and extremely satisfying to win. This six player online Tetris battles was very cool. There is world wide game play with ranking and player stats. It actually makes me a little giddy to finally see good online casual action against other real humans via this big crazy thing called the Internet. Please Nintendo.. More online games if you would.
They are going to be organizing aonline tournaments and the top 500 best scores at the end of the first tournament (December 1-January 31, 2009) can win 1200 Wii Points.
Each player will be represented with their Mii and there is a mode that you can play with the WiiFit Balance board. (I didn't try it out since I don't have one.)
There is a Co-op Tetris mode that was actually a little hard since I could not tell what the computer was going to do. The Shadow mode has you fill a shape with Tetris blocks. The Stage Race mode has you try to squeeze a single block through a long course to reach the finish line. But the most intriguing new mode to me was the Field Climber mode. In this mode there are these little guys that will climb up the Tetris blocks and you need to build platforms and stairs to help them reach the top of the screen. However it can get tricky because you can easily trap them in a hole or accidentally smoosh them under a falling block. It is fun but I am not very good at it yet.
Hudson has been making some respectable WiiWare games that are actually fun and online. It is available for 1200 Nintendo points ($12 US) from the online Wii Shop Channel and is a darn good casual puzzle game for it's price. Makes a game that is more that two decades old seem like a new game and it actually got me excited about playing Tetris again.
Source : http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/
