With modern PC and tablet games becoming more complex, the older games that helped develop gaming into the huge industry it is now risk being shelved.
One such game is Tetris. The tile-matching puzzle video game, released for the first time in the 1980s, is, quite simply, a gaming icon. The objective is simple: build up a structure from the bottom of a block using falling shapes, ensuring all the shapes fit together, like a puzzle, leaving no gaps.
Tetris will not get the heart racing, the hands moving violently or elicit screams and shouts and ums and ahs, but it will certainly stimulate the mind, and is definitely addictive.
I played EA's Tetris for iPad game and loved it. It was a blast from the gaming past, taking me back to my childhood when I played Elevator Action (to which I was addicted), Mario Brothers, Sonic the Hedgehog and, of course, Tetris.
Three options
Players have three options when playing the game: One-touch, Marathon and Galaxy. If One-touch is selected, players have, as the name suggests, only one touch to select where they would like the shape to fall.
The One-touch option is definitely the easiest of the three. As the new shape appears at the top of the block, between three and four shaded options appear for where the player would like the shape to be positioned within the structure in the block.
It is then simply a case of choosing the option that will provide the best fit, tapping the screen and seeing the shape fall into the desired position within the structure.
If the One-touch option is not for you, then the Marathon option may be. This option gives players more control, allowing them to choose where the shape falls, and lets them rotate and position the shape while it falls so that it rests in the desired position.
Then there's the Galaxy option, the aim of which is to "dig all the way down, using as few Tetriminos as possible, to get a five-star rating".
What this means is that the player needs to use as few shapes as possible to reduce the structure. With each shape placed, the structure reduces in size, and once the structure is broken down completely using as few Tetriminos as possible, the player will achieve a five-star rating.
For the One-touch and Marathon options, the levels of difficulty ascend from one to 16. The higher the level of difficulty, the less time the player has to select where the tile should fall.
In a nutshell
The Tetris for iPad game is fantastic, even if only for the novelty factor. Playing the game is not rocket science, and, unlike when playing strategy games, your brain does not need to work overtime.
It is simply a fun, relaxing and hard-to-put-down game that anyone can play and play well. Fittingly, perhaps, the graphics are not the best, but they do not need to be.
This game harks back to the very beginning of the phenomenon that has become gaming. It will entertain and mildly challenge, but most of all, satisfy, as doing well in Tetris entails nothing more than putting together the pieces of a puzzle.
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