Tetris Effect: Connected (PC) Review

The main draw of Tetris Effect is its visuals. Enhance is known for their gorgeous use of particle effects with Rez Infinite and puzzle creation with Lumines, and Tetris Effect combines both beautifully. There are many different levels with varied styles like underwater, tribal, and forest backdrops that also change the appearance of the tetriminos. Videos and screenshots do not do this game justice. Another appealing point is Journey Mode. This is where players unlock the various themes available. There are eight sets of areas with three to five themes in each. Each area must be cleared in order to get its batch of themes. The speed of each theme in this mode lowers and increases with the tempo of the music or audio track, and turning tetriminos also makes a sound. On the PC version, however, some visual hiccups were encountered that were inconsistent across the themes.

How enjoyable the game can be is largely impacted by the display used. On an LG IPS monitor with AMD FreeSync (32QN600-B) used for this review, HDR effects were very inconsistent. Not every theme had issues for this review, but there were a few multiple ones. Unlike consoles that have blanket HDR settings, PCs do not have this luxury without the use of third party programs. In-game, a toggle and brightness setting is available. While the game still looked great with HDR on, monitor settings had to be accessed and visual settings like saturation adjusted solely for Tetris Effect. It also goes without saying but Tetris Effect is sublime on a VR headset.

There are quite a few modes in Tetris Effect: Connected, from classics like Marathon or Sprint, as well as theme playlists similar to Journey Mode. All Clear and Target task require clearing the play area for a different challenge. Modes like Purify and Mystery are very challenging though under the game's Adventurous category, offering up some of the most complex puzzle situations.

By and large, Connected isn't much different than its vanilla counterpart which has now been replaced in digital stores. The star of the show aside from traditional versus modes one would suspect is Connected; a boss battle type mode that pits you along with two friends or random players against an AI. Once a meter fills by clearing lines as three separate players, each play area will then be connected and lines cleared in this phase will add unclearable rows to the boss's grid. Once the boss overfills, the trio wins. As the boss clears lines, certain things will happen to your play areas like lasers chopping lines, blocks raining down or being forced to place giant blocks. This mode is incredibly fun if you get a good group going and all multiplayer is backed by crossplay support, so setting up rooms is easy via room code with friends. It will take longer to be matched up with other players in our experience. Weekend Rituals are a regular feature, allowing participants in a selected mode each weekend to earn a special avatar.