This game does not provoke the best first impression. It actually reminded me of trick-or-treating and getting unpackaged, homemade "candy." But, this consideration quickly falls by the wayside when you begin to play. There are clowns everywhere, I mean. Just look at the screenshots. The circus theme is not apropos of anything as far as I can tell, and it's hard to tell if it was supposed to be some sort of joke or-- moving on.
Super Tetris is not like regular Tetris, where the goal is to get as many Tetrises as possible. Rather, the goal here is to dig yourself down to the bottom of a giant pit- in usual Tetris fashion. The playing field is divided into a top and bottom half. The top half is empty, while the bottom half is a bed of blocks, gaps and special blocks. The goal is to clear every line of that bed by putting blocks in the gaps.
To make this vaguely erotic task more interesting, you'll find that whenever you complete a line, you'll get a number of "antiblocks" which eat regular blocks. Using these strategically, one may uncover gaps, or fashion a hole to match the shape of the next piece. One of the consequences of this feature is that a lot of moves that would be unwise in regular Tetris become the most effective in Super Tetris.
Another twist in the action is the piece limit- each game starts the player with 50 pieces remaining. For every line scored, two pieces are added to the number remaining. Since it requires at least three pieces to create a line, it's essential to work your way downward, and not worry so much about scoring triples or Tetrises.
There are a handful of different play modes to go with the default ten level progression, including cooperative and competitive multiplayer modes. The cooperative mode is fairly unique to this title; I haven't seen it anywhere else. Definitely seems like a lot of fun (even if it isn't at all conducive to actually playing Tetris!) There's no online mode, however.
The controls don't work quite as well as one demands from a Tetris game. Joysticks/gamepads are supported, but you'll have to recalibrate them every time you play. Using the keyboard, I found I couldn't rotate a piece if I had the left or right keys pressed. This is very bad at high speed.
Other problems are relatively minor... if anything touches the "roof" of the playing field, it's game over, even if the middle of the field is completely clear. Nasty surprise, that. There are also some collision errors at high speeds when using the "antiblocks". You might find that they can pass diagonally through blocks that should have been destroyed, creating an unwanted gap.
Overall, it's a 3.5. Super Tetris does justice to the good Tetris name. While it manages to stay a cut above the multitude of gimmicky Tetris-clones that have been made over the years, it loses points because of the control and problems.
Written by:
~Dromiceius
