So this came out on 3DS, so I figured I'd drop some data. It's mostly typical Guideline fare, but a few notable points. tl;dr: + You can customize DAS but it's 30hz max. However, sensitivity settings can be set very fast. + You can disable Hold, move reset, and 7 bag if you want to. + Endless mode has fast 20G and it kills you. + The multiplayer rule is interestingly neither Change On Attack nor xx% rate of change, but change every 4 rows (a la SNES Tetris + Dr. Mario, which changes every 10). + The multiplayer rating system seems to work properly. General DAS start-up and rate are adjustable on a scale of 1-10. The default is 5/5, but you definitely would never want to make it any slower. Lv.10 rate is 30hz, like Tetris Splash and so on. It's nice, but we wonder why they didn't just give us 60hz. Thankfully, the DAS sensitivity settings are quite useful -- Lv.10 delay is actually something faster than I can control on d-pad at the moment, so I end up using 7 or 8. Line clear delay is relatively long. DumbldorsArmy said it feels a bit longer than Tetris Splash. There is no entry delay, as per usual. There are a number of other game options: Ghost - on/off Next Queue - 0-6 (default: 6) Hard Drop - on/off -- off leaves you no ability whatsoever to manual lock, lmao Hold - on/off Lock Down - Extended (move reset) or Classic (step reset) Super Rotation System - on/off -- off just disables wallkicks completely without altering the rotation system in any way, lmao. Randomizer - Single Bag, Double Bag, or Classic Rotation - on/off -- also completely useless (even for a Miscellaneous Challenge goal), as the Guideline piece entry stances leave you with nearly zero ability to actually clear lines. Hold, Lock Down, and Randomizer options are seem usable for challenge runs. The rest feels like an attempt to provide for something that utterly doesn't work given the other constraints of the Guideline. Single Player Marathon - 150 lines, not variable "Goal" system. Endless - Also increments level every 10 lines. 20G starts at Level 20, then lock delay is reduced with each subsequent level. There is a very quick ramp up from usual Guideline pace to just utterly destroying you, so Endless is almost a misnomer. The max level appears to be 30, at which point it stops tracking line progress to the next level and is at quasi- kill-screen speeds. Reaching Level 28 is one of the requirements for the game's "Black Belt" title. Sprint - yeah (EDIT: Oh wait you can start at Level 15 if you want and use high G finesse and floorkick optimizations if you can figure them out. It also makes SZO starts not a deathtouch, since they neglected to guard against them again this time around.) Ultra - yep (EDIT: Unlike the above, you cannot change the starting level.) Battle - 1v1 bot Battle Ultimate - 1v1 bot, items Single Player "Challenge Modes" Rotation Lock - every piece enters with a random, locked orientation, but you can Hold swap things to try to make the stack more favorable to a given piece. Escalation - variable "Goal" Marathon (EDIT: BUT DEDUCTIONS CARRY BETWEEN LEVELS. No more Goal 1 setup strats, just Combo 1 abuse the entire game.) Invisible - 150 line Marathon with "semi-invisible" mechanic from Tetris Friends Survival's bonus level. Almost a complete throwaway in my opinion, more so than TF Survival -- although it features an actual speed curve, they didn't implement the "rank" system that makes things stay invisible for longer. You can always play fast enough to keep it from staying invisible, so it will only really barely affect you if you're thinking about t-spin setups or something. I guess this keeps it achievable for the average player. Master - 150 line Marathon at 20G, but no lock delay progression. Also kind of a joke -- it feels redundant with Endless in the roster. (Look at the bright side -- they realized that 150 line Marathon was obviously better, so they included it 3x as much as variable "Goal" this time around! ) Versus Versus mode feels like a cross between Tetris DS and SNES Tetris + Dr. Mario. I say this because the garbage hole changes position every 4 rows (compared to SNES Tetris's 10, if I recall correctly), but with all of the features of a modern Guideline game. So, garbage is clean, and also very rigidly segmented. The hole change rate is not 100% -- I've seen two segments roll the same position, making it an 8 row garbage segment. It's not known if this is intentional. (The garbage segmentation rule does not match what we've seen in video of the console versions, which appeared to have messier garbage than single hole 100% -- attack rows with 2~3 holes sometimes appeared.) caffeine dropped this PasteBin with the known attack data. It more or less matches what we've been seeing in that last handful of games. The "Championship Rule" mentioned before release does not appear to be present in this version of the game. There is question regarding whether it is featured in the 3DS version at all and will only appear in the later releases, if it'll be part of an update, or what. Online Functionality Quick Play - public matchmaking. Features an Elo-ish rating system. Players that disconnect are finally penalized once again as in Tetris DS, breaking the bad streak left by the Hudson series. You can save replays, but you're limited to one slot and I think you only have the option if you won the match... Community Play - public "playlists" (Battle, Ultimate, Ultra, Sprint) and private channels. Private communities have instanced leaderboards and "Elo" ratings tracked separately from the public ones. Friends Play - shows you a list of players on your 3DS Friends List and allows you to join one if they are playing online. Leaderboards - what it sounds like -- scores/times for the 1P modes, with the exception of Battle/Battle Ultimate track online rating points. You can watch and/or play against replays, with the option to use the same set of pieces -- it's basically a big Power-On Pattern database in that sense, though you can't save scores when using the same pieces. Replays are only viewable for Marathon, Sprint, Ultra, Battle, and Battle Ultimate...
Thanks for the comprehensive information Kitaru From what you say it seems like there is QUITE a lot of things that need proper 'ironing out' (-almost seems like its still in the beta testing stage) Fingers-crossed for a more 'polished' release on PC...though I am very doubtful of this... - Jono
Sure thing. As I said, some of it feels like they had an interesting idea and couldn't really execute on it because they were shackled by the Guideline. Other parts (i.e. severely limited replay slots) seem like they were limited by what UI elements they could easily express, how much save space they were afforded on the 3DS, or other such technical limitations. As far as having half-baked/"missing the point" modes goes, this also seems par for the course for Guideline games. It feels like they're making an attempt to nod toward more hardcore interests -- "Hey look we have an invisible and something called Master it's like TGM!" -- without really capturing the whole picture. What they end up with is something that's likely out of reach for their target audience while also completely uninteresting to the serious players. As a result, it looks like only 10 players have unlocked and submitted Master scores so far. I understand why it happens, but it's still unfortunate. Anyway, we have a game with good movement options (though 60hz would obviously be better) and what looks like a fairly solid multiplayer rule. The single player is still nothing much to write home about, but at least it has stabilized on something reasonable with Marathon/Endless being true line-based modes. We'll have to see where it goes from there. It looks like there is some tournament action brewing on the horizon. At the very least, it seems like adjustable move speeds could be here to stay. Between Tetris Friends, Tetris Battle (albeit abusively priced thanks to the f2p model used there), Unity Tetris, and Tetris Ultimate, tuning options seem to have some traction.
What does everyone think of the button layout? It's good, but I wonder if it might be better if hard drop was on a button rather than up dpad
I thought the same exact thing. I want trigger drop! I've done something like it before and I was really hoping for key config. The console versions will alleviate some of the hand-cramping issues, but d-pad still feels a bit awkward in a game with no entry delay and DAS preservation tech that requires diagonal dropping. I'm just waiting to play on keyboard, really...
I have an update! It turns out that Escalation is a different form of broken than usual. In this iteration, any lines cleared in excess to level up will in fact deduct from the next. As such, you can no longer do Goal 1 abuse setups (i.e., it used to be optimal to tetris on Goal 9 into a t-spin on Goal 1 to maximize the points crammed into the end of the level). The only scoring abuse that appears to remain in this mode is single-single combos.
It feels like the L and the mirror L rotates upside down sometimes... That or I am too use to playing TGM with an arcade stick and buttons, but tetris on my gb doesn't have this feeling...
It might have something to do with the inverted entry stances for L/J/T pieces (i.e., flat side down instead of flat side up). The transitions between each state are the same, but you're probably used to pressing the opposite button to get to a particular position. For example, to put an L piece in the "letter" position (dull edge down), you now have to press A where you would have pressed B. The rotation works the same in each case, but you have a different starting point. Another way to think of it is that the piece has "already been rotated twice." Bear in mind that TGM3 actually has the rotation buttons mapped backwards for World. So, that could be part of the transition confusion as well. At any rate, you're not alone in this. I can list a handful of players that have run into this "backwards button feeling" due to the flat side down entry positions.
It is the starting positions, it's so weird that all these tetris games have these insignificant differences. I wish this was an option we could change... oh and I havnt played world since you guys harped on it!
Psh, it was the same on the DS - just man the fuck up and play through the cramps you get in the first couple of weeks
I didn't have any problem with TDS. The system had a bigger d-pad and the game didn't allow diagonal drop if I recall correctly, so it was sort of a non-issue. 3DS has a tiny d-pad that's lower on the console due to the analog slider and the game allows diagonal drop, so to play optimally you have to do a lot of d-pad fiddling (left -> diagonal -> left -> diagonal, etc.) when it's already less comfortable to do so.
