Tetris ultimate (next gen)

[caffeine]

Tetris Ultimate announced to also be released on PS Vita (whatever that is) in the fall. Haven't had this many platforms for a single game since Tetris Worlds.

[waizqt]

[InkofDeath]

Haven't had this many platforms for a single game since Tetris Worlds.

Which makes it odd that it isn't coming out for the WiiU, or at least confirmed to be on that console.

Really hoping there's high customization so that full skill ranges can be realized within the game. In a few interviews, Ubisoft have stated they have a 'heavy multiplayer experience' for this version of Tetris, and the focus has been on this audience - even though they expect a large portion to play single player only. Proper profiles with stats, or even a matchmaking experience would be cool. Here's hoping.

Hoping we find out more information soon so I can stop giving into the hype and see what the game is really going to be.

[waizqt]

Update 5.06pm at L.A stream now http://www.twitch.tv/ubisoft

waiting for someone to post a youtube video of the yesterday stream

[waizqt]

Jeff cork post on gameinformer.com new information about the game very insteresting and you must check it out
[spoiler]This year marks Tetris' 30th anniversary, which is an impressive milestone for a game that remains relevant. Ubisoft is marking the event with the release of Tetris Ultimate, a downloadable game for the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Vita. I played some head-to-head matches in the new Battle Ultimate mode, which adds some crazy power-ups to the core Tetris gameplay.

Battle Ultimate is basically competitive Tetris, only you'll occasionally get a falling block marked by one of several power-up icons. Destroy the block, and the associated power-up with activate. Here's what you're up against:

Hip to Be Square: If you destroy this mustache-emblazoned block, your opponents' next four tetrominoes will be in the square-shaped configuration. This can be good or bad news for them, depending on how their well is shaping up.

Carousel: This merry-go-round is particularly unnerving. If you get hit with this, your rows will slowly shift to the left for 13 seconds. If you're not paying close attention, it's easy to drop your blocks in the wrong spot, or for previously advantageous openings to temporarily disappear as your well of blocks is rotated at the bottom.

Buzzsaw: This is the only defensive power-up in your arsenal. Clear it, and three rows will be shaved from your well. Not bad!

Let it Rain: Do you like to be the worst person possible? You'll love the Let it Rain power-up. This one drops garbage blocks into your opponents' side for a brief period of time, fouling up their plans. It's fun to watch, but not fun when it happens to you.

Haunted Well: In an homage to Tetris: The Grand Master, this one makes your opponents' side of blocks invisible until they drop four blocks. All the while, a spooky ghost wails.

I played several rounds of the game, and I liked how the power-ups added some variety to the matches. Like a lot of people, I've been playing Tetris for decades now, and it's great to see something different added. Purist should know that Battle Ultimate is just one of several modes, so they won't have to worry about mustaches taking over their revered game.

Marathon offers a vanilla Tetris experience, with the goal of hitting the 15th level. Battle is like Battle Ultimate, only without the power-ups. Sprint challenges players to destroy 40 rows as soon as they can. Ultra is a points-based game, with the goal of hitting the largest possible score in three minutes. Endless is essentially marathon mode with a different name.

Players can also tweak the game to their liking, too. Options include obvious changes, including showing the next block (up to the next four), eliminating the hard drops, and turning off the ghost block that helps players visualize where their tetromino will land. Then you can dig deeper, tweaking the speed of drops and turns, and even how blocks are chosen, from the modern "random seven" concept that adds a little bit of fairness to block selection or true random drops.

These options allow players to recreate their favorite Tetris versions from over the years. I spoke with game designer Florence Vaillant, and she said that the team went back and even set up the old Game Boy rules.

Look for Tetris Ultimate this fall. [/spoiler]

gamerinformer.com

[InkofDeath]

Today showed a lot more information about the game. It is now a definitive buy for me. Hopefully we can a bit more information before its release so that it can be a true official multiplayer replacement.

[Extruderx]

Players can also tweak the game to their liking, too. Options include obvious changes, including showing the next block (up to the next four), eliminating the hard drops, and turning off the ghost block that helps players visualize where their tetromino will land. Then you can dig deeper, tweaking the speed of drops and turns, and even how blocks are chosen, from the modern "random seven" concept that adds a little bit of fairness to block selection or true random drops.

These options allow players to recreate their favorite Tetris versions from over the years. I spoke with game designer Florence Vaillant, and she said that the team went back and even set up the old Game Boy rules.

Nice! Finally, SNES Tetris battle mode can be recreated!

[KurisuKaatsu]

So before I put my take of my opinion of Tetris Ultimate, I'll start off saying that my favorite Tetris games are Magical Tetris Challenge (MAME), Puyo Puyo Tetris (PS3), and Tetris Grandmaster 3 (MAME). Maybe It'll help give you some idea of my "vision" of Tetris is. So, the following is an opinion. I'm not stating towards any Hard Drop or Tetris Ultimate producers that their project is wrong, but meerly what I felt from playing the game. (Trying to prevent a possible bomb shell.)

So, I got to play approx. 6 rounds of Tetris Ultimate's Power-Up Battle and watch about ~2 hours of beginning players try their bout on the mainstage. I'm just going to ramble off things I would like changed or didn't like. I'll try to keep this post organized but there's so many tangents you can go. For this "review", I will talk about Power-Up Battle mode only.

Ramble Start:

Combos:
Before I even get into items, let's talk about how combos need to make a return. New players need ANYTHING they can to send damage. There were people on stage with a 8 minute+ battle with only 3 lines sent and people were not intrigued for those "battles". New players can not consistently Tetris and combos are the easiest way to create lines for opponents for new players IMO. As proof on Day 2, I purposely only beat my opponent using items only (taking my time as asked by the producer.)

Damage Notification:
There also needs to be a better notification of damage. Either by the amount of lines sent, or item modifiers about to be affecting your field. Let's start off with item notification.

New players can't watch their opponents field as well as us experts. Especially when it takes ~5-10 seconds to lay one piece. Have the name of the items hang on top of their field (or use the icon of the modifier) so they know what's about to come down on them.  It'll also allow viewers have an easier time connecting with the battle when they know their opponent just sent them something bad and it's waiting to affect their field. It'll be like puyo puyo where not only the player, but the viewer knows that something is about to happen after the next piece is laid.
It'll also help us experts since my battle with Blink, we had multiple modifiers at once. It would of been nice to know what 3 items I'm going to be dealing with and how long.

As for the line sent notification, there's 2 issues with it. The biggest being that it gives you NO notification about how many lines are about to be sent over. I had to essentially estimate the red bar labeling as either 1 line, some lines, and ****. Also, new players can't correlate that how that indicator is going to affect the field. I actually like Tetris Friends/Party Deluxe's way of indicating damage with the dot's representing the amount of lines about to be received. Let's take this a step further. How about a horizontal red glowing line on your field also showing how far your field will be pushed up when you lay your next piece! Once again, we're trying to show new players and viewers what's going to affect the player. Experts may like the red line idea as they can "estimate" how much field space they have left to determine if they should combo garbage or go on the offensive with some additional T-spins.

Pieces/Items Consistancy
One of the things I hate about Tetris but love about Puyo is piece consistency. My first piece in puyo will be the exact same one as my opponent as well as EVERY piece after. Want the experts to stop complaing they had a better drop set? Give them BOTH the same exact pieces in the exact same order as their opponent. Want new players to stop complaining that their opponent got all the long "I" pieces at the right time? Problem solved if the players are given identical dropsets. I know I'm already going to buy this game so you may no longer care about my opinion but out of everything I gripe about, this is one of the biggest things I would LOVE fixed.

Also, take this one step further, how about identical items also! It can be something like:
Make It Rain
Haunted Well
It's Hip To Be Square
Carousel
Buzzsaw
Repeat Loop

(Let's even go even 1 MORE step further, every loop completed increased the difficulty of the item! Carousel starts as 1 field slide and +1 field slide per every loop. It's Hip To Be Square starts with 1 "O" block and +1 O block every loop. Haunted Well lasts +1 extra piece per loop. Make It Rain adds +5 random blocks per loop. Oh dear what did I just think of...)

Items:
I'm going to start off by saying that the names of the items NEED to be changed. "It's hip to be square" was almost wtf/snickered in line every time the poor announcer was discussing the item. (and yes, not in a positive way).

Also, new players and even viewers struggled to see the items on the field. You should put a neon tracer that rotates around the piece to help emphasize there's something special with the piece. I don't feel that a glow would be sufficient since your background is essentially glowing particles formed like a cloud.

Carousel/Treadmill
In theory, this item is easy. I noticed that the game slides the field 10 times with in "theory" the field will reset just like it was before. The problem is that it take 10 pieces to do that. Poor new players who got this item were WTF. Especially when 10 pieces were 2 minutes of their battle. This item compared to every other item is the HARDEST modifier to coup with. New players and viewers also lose track on how much the field/when it will stop sliding. I feel that the item will have a better effect for new players if the field was slid randomly either 4 or 6 spaces instantly after the next piece lands.

Music:
I'm sorry, this was horrible. It's 2014, you can't make even something simple as layered music like Super Mario Land with Yoshi? I'm really spoiled/picky with music and the music can make and break a game. Who remembers the first time you battled with Puyo Satan music? Or Tetris DS's marathon mode having music getting more intense with the level you were on. (Even Tetris DS's push mode was awesome.) I even give EA's PS3 "Tetris" the slightest of musical respect as they tried changing the music in marathon mode depending what level you were on. Tetris Ultimate though? Ambiance music. I couldn't stand the music in the game. Sorry!

(I know some Tetris experts even prefer no music and the option of no music or Tetris Ultimate's ambiance should be available. I would just prefer a different option. As much as I hate Tetris blitz, I even enjoyed my music experience from that game more that Tetris Ultimate)

Ending:
I was also going to complain about soft drop speed and other picky expert stuff but I hear that the game can be tuned so I'll leave this stuff to the side until later. Overall, Tetris Ultimate felt like a step back. After Puyo Tetris, It's going to be really hard for me to find something just as interesting. I'm reminded of essentially a sequel to Tetris Party Deluxe in HD.

Please just remember that this is a ramble. I did not read through my own words (yet.) I likely have a very different point of view of Tetris compared to alot of the members and by no means tried to offend the members of Hard Drop or the Tetris Ultimate staff.

[Blink]

No offense taken by members here, we don't work for Ubisoft or the Tetris company so thanks for sharing your opinions of the game.

I agree with you that the Carousel item is overpowered, I've told them that it lasted for way too many minos.  I think there's a high chance it will get rebalanced.  I also agree that "it's hip to be square" is a dumb and unnecessarily long specials name.  Make it rain sounds dumb too, I can see it getting a short laugh the first time someone hears it, but never again after that.

I actually really liked the music and sound effects though haha.  The music was calm and not distracting, it's what I prefer playing Tetris to because I can focus better.  The line clears and sends were very satisfying to do also thanks to the sounds and effects.  Overall for me, the game was a step forward from EA's PS3 Tetris.  I might be reaching but I hope that the customizability and championship settings mode will make this game a good choice for tournaments.

It would have been better if their first impression to us wasn't a luck based specials mode without customizability and geared completely towards casual players.  I think we only got a really small glimpse of the game's potential and am looking forward to see the more competitive modes.

Also, I need to get my hands on Puyo Tetris after how much you're hyping it up!  Is it really that good??

*EDIT* When I was playing live against you I didn't even notice, but yes receiving the same piece sequence should be standard in multiplayer Tetris games by now!

[ItsCeeCee]

All of this post-announcement feedback is actually very good for us here at Ubi to hear. We want to not just be faithful to the core fans of the game, but we want this to be the Tetris that you all have been waiting for and can only do that by listening and delivering what we can.

As Blink said, Tetris Ultimate is still in production so there is still a bit of room to adjust and polish. With that being said, there's also many things that we haven't announced yet or shown to the public. (Believe me, I'm bursting at the seams to do so)

Blink, it was a pleasure to meet you and I'm sure we will cross paths many more times in the future. ^_^

[Blink]

It was a blast!  I had fun meeting you too CeeCee, hope to battle you on Tetris Ultimate when it's out.

[caffeine]

Customizeable controls confirmed. Gotta remember how to play with left/right assigned to the bumpers now.

Btw, Henk is slowly winning me over with this talk of powerups, high FPS, wanting to find the worlds best player, etc.

Also confirmed: J is Pajitnov's favorite piece.

[zaphod77]

I really wish something would be said about championship rules.

Being able to tweak settings seems interesting, though.

that said i still think we will be stuck  with super rotation system, which is badly balanced for high gravity play, and always will be.

[caffeine]

Sisu was right. It's coming to 3ds: http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2014/06/t..._release_on_3ds

[ItsCeeCee]

Zaphod, we haven't made statements about the tournament rules because we're still working with many of both the classic and modern Tetris competitors to finalize them and deliberating on how competitive Tetris will be compelling to watch as a spectator.