Tetris Forever PC Review 8/10 "The Story Is the Star" 💣 @DigitalEclipse #Retrogaming

My Tetris is Nintendo Game Boy era Tetris. Once you had that chunky Game Boy in your hand and a copy of Tetris inserted into the back of that pocket gem it meant that was all you were going to play for the next 6 months until the kid at school who had 15 game carts was able to lend you another game to play on your Game Boy.

Tetris Forever fills in the gaps of what came before Nintendo's 1989 Tetris and also what came after. During this wonderful character led journey Digital Eclipse prove once again that they are the masters of the interactive video game documentary.

If you have seen the Tetris movie on Apple TV  then you probably know the exciting story of Henk Rogers and Alexey Pajitnov and how they came to meet. Granted, the Apple TV version is overly dramatized but nonetheless it's still a great story. 

Digital Eclipse's Tetris opus gives us that familiar timeline aesthetic that Digital Eclipse have done so well with the Atari 50, Karateka and Jeff Minter Llamasoft interactive docs. As we work our way through a chronological story of Tetris it's interspersed with divergent landmarks on the timeline all told with video, pictures and the opportunity to play some of the versions of Tetris over the years.

Immediately you will be drawn in by the charismatic Henk Rogers and the understated Alexey Pajitnov and how this special relationship works and has worked over the many decades that they have worked together spreading the good word of Tetris all over the world.

As you get to know these characters through the video interviews you will be dying to know how this whole behemoth of a game came to be. It's fantastic piece of game design and editing that stitches this tale together and keeps you intrigued as you work your way through its chapters. It took me around 7 hours to work my way through all of the content and play the games and I enjoyed every minute of it.

Obviously this series from Digital Eclipse appeals to gamers who love the history of video games and who are eager to learn more. Granted, most of the Tetris story is in a book, a movie or previous documentaries but sitting down to play your way through Tetris history is an experience that I would much prefer to do as a primary way to learn the intriguing story.

Henk Rogers is an intriguing character and both instantly likeable and a magnetic force of nature. It's clear that Henk is an astute business man that saw an opportunity and gambled literally everything to harness this once in a lifetime perfect storm of events to come out with a lifelong friend in Alexey and also to own the rights to arguably the finest, purest video game ever created.

A few things that did slightly irk me with this title was the fact that if you are halfway through a timeline it doesn't bookmark your place when you go away and come back again, so you have to remember where you got up to to carry on (relatively easily fixed I'm sure). 

Also part of the experience is to 100% your timeline and I couldn't see a clear indication of what I'd already viewed on the timeline so when it was telling me that I was 68% through a certain chapter I had to go into everything again to work out which part I hadn't zoomed into yet. It turned out that if you didn't zoom into a flyer / advert then it didn't show as viewed / completed even though you can view and read the accompanying text without zooming into the item on the timeline. 

The other slight gripe was that the timeline music was on repeat for the entire timeline and all of the chapters, it felt like it needed a few more pieces of music thrown into the mix to draw you into each chapter slightly more.

A true bonus and a real treat was the inclusion of a new version of Tetris called Tetris Time Warp which rewards you with a time warp after you clear lines and go up in levels. You will time warp back to an earlier version of Tetris mid game to try and complete a challenge within a time limit and then come back to present day to continue with the up to date version of Tetris. This is a great way of jumping around the various versions of Tetris in a modern day Tetris. An excellent idea well implemented that is really fun to play.

SUMMARY

If you love video games history as much as I do then you need to get this wonderful video game interactive documentary into your game library, I promise you will not be disappointed in the latest offering from those wonderful guys at Digital Eclipse.

I'm really looking forward to whatever comes next from Digital Eclipse.

Right I'm off to fly half way around the world to see if I can locate and buy some rights to an unknown video game.

8/10

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