Tetris Effect: Connected (PlayStation 5) review "Monstars and Resonair took on a series with an established, particular fanbase and boldly put their stamp on it."

Many developers have tried their hand at Tetris over the years, but few pack the pedigree of Monstars and Resonair, who worked on both Rez Infinite and Lumines Remastered. Named after the well-studied Tetris effect, a phenomenon in which players who spend a long time with the game reporting still seeing blocks falling after shutting off the game (among other things), the developers sought to deliver a solid Tetris experience while improving the visual and audio experience of a game series pioneered on a green LCD screen. In addition to these efforts to create an immersive experience, the developers have also introduced a new time-slowing game mechanic called Zone. This mode allows players who’ve cleared enough lines to enter a state which, regardless of the speed level they’re playing on, slows the action to a crawl, allowing for very deliberate placement and potentially, massive combos.

The main campaign is called Journey Mode, and you know Tetris Effect: Connected is going to be different than most Tetris titles when a tool tip pops up and tells you that the main campaign is “a voyage of emotion and discovery.” I’ve completed it on expert mode, but I don’t think I had any major epiphanies along the way. The levels carry names like “Kaleidoscope” and “Turtle Dream” and “Mermaid Cove” and there’s a fair amount of woo throughout the game, a new age spiritual vibe that just doesn’t do anything for me. Against a backdrop of stars, stages are connected to each other across a galactic filament, and you’ll need to beat a series of three-to-five stages in a row to unlock the next area. As you move through the stages, drop speeds increase and your playfield carries over from one stage to the next. The first stages aren’t too much of a challenge, but despite whatever positive energy the game is trying to convey, the last few prove to be a real gauntlet.

Triggering the Zone mechanic in these later levels becomes a vital tool for survival. You can take advantage of the pause in action to survey the mess you’re in – sometimes worth more than the points you can earn in the mode – and then place tetrominoes deliberately to clear your playfield. You earn Zone time by scoring points outside of it, and you’re only able to generate enough for 1-2 trips to the Zone per stage, so it can’t be abused. The mechanic is well-incorporated into the game and while I don’t think it is vital enough to become a mainstay of the series like the Hold function has, the mechanic gives Tetris Effect: Connected a unique distinction that positively distinguishes it from other entries in the franchise.

Journey Mode is very compelling. I love the playfield carrying over, as this really escalates the challenge and stress, making victory all the more satisfying. I’ve played a fair amount of Tetris over the last two decades and this is also the first campaign mode that I’ve ever seen that manipulates the drop speed of tetrominoes mid-stage. You’ll start clearing rows at one speed, and once you’ve cleared enough it may shift down to a lower speed, before suddenly ramping up to a faster drop speed than when you started. This really keeps you on your toes, and between this and the playfield carrying over, clearing lines as quickly as possible is vital to your survival.

I don’t love all of the additions, though. As I mentioned earlier, efforts were made to improve the visual experience of the game. Mostly what that means is the playfield takes up a fraction of the screen in favor of graphic backdrops – bobbing hot air balloons, horses made of stars flashing with the beat of drums, and volcanos exploding in the darkness. While many are innocuous, I found some really interfered with my ability to enjoy the game. The level “Pharoh’s Code” shoots bright flashes of light from the middle of the playfield toward the player. This really impacted my depth perception and caused my eyes to lose focus, which is not ideal when playing stages at the highest drop speeds. These kinds of graphic effects aren’t restricted to the background, either. The level “Orbit” is set on a space station and the blocks are cast in a dull, flat gray that makes it really difficult to see the individual tetromino segments. This, in turn, makes it really difficult to determine stack heights was when placing pieces.

What makes Tetris lovely and why it has stuck around so long is that success is dictated by skill. I always feel like, even though I might get a rough stretch of pieces here and there, if I’m good enough, I can weather most storms. It never leaves you feeling cheated. But when I fuck up because I was having a hard time seeing the blocks or because the background effects were too distracting, I do feel robbed. These visual effects only hamper a few levels, so I don’t think they’re intentional or designed to add challenge, just ill-conceived. Fortunately, the audio effects actually do enhance the experience. BPMs fluctuate as the level’s drop speed changes and drums and cymbals crash with each button press spinning your tetrominoes into position. I occasionally fall into what feels like a legitimate trance as I drop pieces into place in sync with the beat of the music, and when that happens, I feel like every tetromino has a specific spot where it’s supposed to be placed and that I know exactly where that is. This is deliciously satisfying.

Once you complete Journey Mode, you can replay it to get better scores, or you can lose yourself in either the Effect or Multiplayer modes. Effect houses all your traditional modes like Marathon, Quick Play, and Ultra. I particularly enjoy Zone Marathon, which adds the Zone mechanic to conventional Marathon mode, but others are not my favorite. Mystery, a mode that requires you to survive random effects like the screen inverting or tetrominoes quadrupling in size, is just not very fun. You can usually pick the stage you play on in Effect mode, so I was able to avoid the stages with the most annoying graphic effects. Every game type is ranked in Effect mode and scores are added to leaderboards, which sated my competitive energy until I felt familiar enough with the game’s mechanics to drop into multiplayer.

Multiplayer here is anything but standard. The two primary modes are Connected and Zone Battle. Connected is a cooperative mode where three players take on the CPU. Each player has their own playfield and as they clear lines, the points they earn contribute toward filling the Zone meter. Once filled, the individual playfields are merged together into one enormous playfield, and you’re able to move pieces in slow-motion across the full expanded playfield as you work cooperatively to clear as many lines as possible. It’s chaotic and frantic and when you’re working with players with similar drop speeds to your own, blissful. Zone Battle is a more conventional one-on-one battle mode against players from around the world. This is always fun and there’s a robust online community playing at all hours of the day. I only wish Zone Battle had a rematch option at the end of matches. It’s sometimes hard to find someone at your skill level and it sucks to lose someone good to the fates of random matchmaking.

I love Tetris Effect: Connected. It has some things I don’t like for sure, but this will be my go-to Tetris game for the foreseeable future. I love the Zone mechanic and while I found some of the graphical effects intrusive, the game is otherwise stellar from top-to-bottom. Monstars and Resonair took on a series with an established, particular fanbase and boldly put their stamp on it and succeeded in every place that counts. If you enjoy modern Tetris variations, this game is an absolute must-play and one you do not want to miss.

Community review by justjess (August 27, 2023) Jessica Wadleigh writes creative non-fiction from Portland, Ore. She runs zines + things, a literary zine press publishing thirty titles. You can find more of Jessica's work online at zinesandthings.com or @zinesandthings on Instagram.