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Tetris DS - Making touching fun!
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BY JAMES O’CONNOR
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James is a freelance writer with way too much time on his hands. For example, before submitting this month’s opinion piece he actually thought he’d get away with just sending in a screenshot of his highest minesweeper score (he managed four clicks before dying - pathetic).
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involving the building of a formidable, perfect tower, and hoping that one important long piece will come along at just the right moment (a comment on relationships too? – Ed). Constantly at the edge of oblivion, losing over and over with barely a line under her belt, eventually this approach worked too, and she knocked out an epic performance.
Both approaches are valid ways of playing the game, and, in a wider sense, living your life. In the crazy world of sales work, too: putting it all into those big sales, or chipping away, gaining ground here and there and turning out a tidy performance in the process. In a moment of pure Tetris Zen, the many tangled paths of life can become clear. Boss, if you’re still here, I lied earlier: I was playing Tetris. That’s why I made double my budget today. Suck it
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- Tetris on gameboy, still a classic!
NEXT TIME –
Ctrl Alt Del: what a fucking stupid comic..
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 ccasionally, when I’m at work, I will play games on the computer (unless my boss is reading this, in which case I don’t). We have all sorts: Pacman, Bubble Bobble, a surprisingly good Sonic rip-off, Stick Cricket, Bastard AI Pool, the list goes on (or, more accurately, ends here for the sake of narrative flow). Today was Tetris day. Now, while I think Tetris has lost the ‘Best Puzzle Game Ever’ status to Meteos – which is a seriously amazing piece of pure, unabashed genius – there’s no denying its place in the upper echelons, or its universal appeal. Office Tetris is an important part of any good working environment. It’s a game very much designed to encourage different outlooks and approaches. Generally, Tetris’s effect on me is limited to the music playing in my head whenever I’m trying to pack a lot of things into a small space, but today I really took on board the lessons that Tetris can teach.
If you’ve been living under a rock for the last 25 years, I’m not going to bother explaining Tetris to you, lest I waste a paragraph on a trite, unnecessary videogame journalism cliché. Anyway, the game is about block stacking, but it’s all in your approach. There are many ways to play Tetris, and a lot can influence your play style: opinions, views on how a good game should unfold, and even your general approach to life. I realised this today as I started to view the game in a different light. It wasn’t just about sticking the pieces where
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they looked like they would best fit – it was all about building for the future. ‘I could stick the L Block there, it would fit. But where do I go from there?’ This approach assumes a T block is coming up soon. ‘I can see the piece coming next, but after that I have no idea. Best to place it over here where it won’t play much of a role for now, I can always clear it up later if need be.’ A few pieces later, the tray was empty again. Such is the Zen of Tetris.
My co-worker, having gunned her way through Pacman, approached the game from a different angle. For her, it was all about the Tetris, that sweet flash as four lines melt away at once. A much riskier approach,
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