Tetraminos Review

Tetraminos Review Screenshot 1

Tetraminos is the modern-day answer to Tetris now available on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and who doesn’t love Tetris? The game where you fit blocks into your grid the best you can to clear lines, and god forbid you get too close to the top! I have loved Tetris since I first played it as a young child on the Nintendo Game Boy so I am happy to be able to play it again, but unfortunately this clone Tetraminos does not quite live up to the standards of the original.

You could call Tetraminos a bit of a rip-off, and I will. It does not offer enough differences from the original Tetris to be a game in its own right, I mean even the name sounds a bit too similar. Of course this is no way affiliated by the original makers of Tetris so if you ask me it’s a bit of a dodgy grey area, but as there’s been lots of other Tetris clones over the years it’s not really so much of an issue, but these games are always just going to be sat in the shadow of the original and best.

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However Tetraminos has tried to set itself apart from its grandfather in a number of ways. First, in Tetris all falling shapes are made up of four blocks but Tetraminos has tried to mix this up some what by including one, two, three and five block pieces. It is not a massive change but it sure adds a bit of variety and some of the shape pieces make it a bit trickier than the original – for instance a falling + shape piece always proves to be difficult to place without totally messing up your nice and neat lines! It also adds to the original Tetris design by adding in multiplayer. Now you can compete on the same screen against up to 3 friends (four players all together) by seeing who can get the highest score. Its fun but exactly the most fun couch co-op game, you’d really want something a bit more action-packed to get the party mood going rather than a game of tetris!

It also adds a couple of new game modes. There is a time attack mode where you are set against the clock, and also a Puzzle mode, where you have a set number of moves to make to clear a screen of preset block formations. All these additions are fun and it means that there’s a bit more replayability to the game, giving you new playing options, but at the end of the day it’s still not all enough to make this game stand out in its own right against the original Tetris.

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Looks wise Tetraminos is not anything special. In fact it’s a bit of a migraine to look at actually. The colours are very vivid with very colourful shapes against a very colourful background. I could not look at the screen for too long, I ended up having to turn it off before a headache set in! The game itself does not occupy much of the screen, the rest is just the background that contains your score and overhead information. I feel like a more mute background would have been better against the brightly coloured shapes, or perhaps vice versa. The shapes are not in 3D or anything, they are just very basic 2D shapes. There is no dimension to the game and the visuals do not really have any personality. Whilst the game doesn’t need anything fancy to do what it does, it would have been nice for it to have some kind of theme or character. Even if the shapes were just in 3D to make them pop a bit more, would have been better.

If you really really loved Tetris then you will probably also enjoy Tetraminos because it’s basically the same game. It’s not an amazing game by any means and since it does not really do anything majorly different apart from have different shaped pieces I can’t really rate it very highly. It is a very basic game, but its at least entertaining if you’re bored. I’d rather play the original but since I don’t have a game boy any more, then at least Tetraminos fills that Tetris shaped void!

Rating 5

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Sony Playstation 4 code was provided to Brash Games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk.

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