#the game is called puyo puyo tetris if you guys are wondering

[channnel]

Aizetsu playing games while his family argues.

I have no reason to poorly make this, but I just want to let you know that this is a tetris game.

[thatluckybear]

What kinda gamer is ThatLuckyBear?

This is a long post. So I'm into video games maybe a bit too much. Here's what I like:

Tetris + Dr. Mario (puzzle games): Core to my gaming spirit. I like to do speedruns of 0-21 on Dr. Mario 64 and I've been known to play 0-20 on Dr. Mario for the NES as well. I loved Tetris since NES but fell back in love with Tetris DS and now I mostly just do sprints on tetr.io. I'm also a 8 chain Puyo-Puyo scrub and I like the game but lack the energy to get better at it. Since this is kind of in the vein of puzzle solving the Ace Attorney games as well as oldschool Point and Click adventure games are wonderful for me as well.

Soulslike: These are all fun. I haven't played most of them though. Dark Souls 1 and Bloodborne are my favs and I've put a lot of time into Elden Ring but Miquella shut down my run and I haven't had time to grind it out. I'll finish it eventually though.

Metroidvania: Huge fan of the genre. Hollowknight is my favorite at time of writing but Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow is an ultra banger and I would have a hard time not mentioning it. I've played all the DS Castlevanias and I love them all.

Schlooters: Looting and shooting is fun. I play coop with my wife and we really enjoy Borderlands. We also had a good time with Outriders. Destiny 2 has been kinda tough to get into but we're trying to get a feel for it before investing any money.

MMORPGS: I've been doing these since 2003 if you can believe it. I was playing Ragnarok Online pre-beta by sneaking onto jRO. I really hit the road running with the iRO beta. Since then I've put a lot of love into Tera Online (Elin berserker just tickles my "hehe" bone, I had a popo too but Elin was the best imo) - I enjoyed FFXIV (Lala paladin) but it's too expensive for me to keep up with the monthly. I really wanna finish FFXIV's story someday. Phantasy Star Online, and Dungeon Fighter Online get a honorable mention but I really haven't had a chance to be in love with them since my MMO muscles are weak and my gaming time short in my age.

RPGS: Classic and modern I'm a big fan of RPGS. I've fallen in love with Dragon Quest recently although it was one of the first RPGS I played (Dragon Warrior NES.) I remember looking through Nintendo Power Magazine and looking at the illustrations and descriptions of the weapons and just getting SO JAZZED. Anyway Super Mario RPG is the best RPG of all time followed by Pokemon Blue/Red would be my call. I love modern Pokemon games but I haven't spent much time with others.

Action RPG: Monster Hunter, Yakuza (love but never played much,) Cyberpunk 2077, Resident Evil (2/4/7) and so many more. I'm a hunting horn main and I am head over heels for Monster Hunter and will always love it.

Competitive: I like to compete but I don't do it much because I have /emotional issues/ and I can't keep my lid on proper. That said I really have a great time playing Smash Ultimate (not a Melee guy sorry it's too hard for me) Street Fighter, Tekken, Granblue VS, and Smash are kind of the only ones I like playing these days. While I used to do a lot of FPS competitives I'm boycotting Actiblizzard so no COD or Overwatch til they remove Bobby Kotick. Valorant is too hard and time consuming but I love it (I'm bad at it sadly.) I might play Fortnite someday but idk if I'll get into it.

the COMF: I love some comfy games. Some of the above fit that category for me (Pokemon Red/Blue to be specific) but Stardew, Animal Crossing, anything Wholesome games, Minecraft, Stray etc. Anything that can make me sleepy usually fits me well.

Platformers: I get into some 3d mario games. I especially enjoyed Odyssey. I kind of get most of my platforming jazz out of the metroidvania stuff but I couldn't get through this without mentioning how much the 3d (and 2d for that matter) mario games matter to me.

There's obviously millions more games that I forgot and couldn't touch on. Day of Defeat was a formative competitive shooter experience as well as all the other HL1 mods I played. I could go on forever but I hope this helps you understand what kind of gamer I am. While I'm pretty eclectic in taste I'm also pretty formulated. These days I spend most of my time trying to find coop experiences to have with my wife so lmk if you've got some cool ones I should look into. 🧡

[kastle09]

Why I fell out of competitive Tetris,  and the frustration of The Tetris Company (TTC)

In my life previous to FGC I was heavily involved with a Tetris variant called “Cultris 2” as a player since 2011 and Tournament Organiser for 3-4 years. You can even see my early article writing attempts as well. 

I go back to it every now and again but I sometimes wonder where it could have gone. I had dreams at one time to see Tetris reach the heights of the other esports, but it could never get there. The things that have halted its progress and development when I left are still ruining the community I loved even now.

I almost think the original version of Tetris was so successful it has halted anyone bad mouthing the game in its current standing. A game can be groundbreaking and revolutionary, but it can also be out of date, and that is exactly what is happening with Tetris at the moment.

Short overview on competitive Tetris

So a bit of background for those of you not as familiar with it, there are (broadly speaking) three kinds of players: Marathon, Sprint, and Battle.

Marathon is classic tetris; High score, playing as long as you can. If you watch Classic Tetris World Championship or the fantastic documentary “Ecstasy of Order” you would be extremely familiar with this game mode. It is also what I would say is the most fundamental tetris, the other game modes will branch off but it doesn’t start without understanding these games. Tetris on the NES and Tetris:The Grand Master (TGM) Series are examples of marathon.

Sprint is 40 line mode. Clear 40 lines as fast as possible. These world records are amazing to behold. I still remember a few years ago going under 20 second barrier was an amazing feat, now closing in on under 15. Jstris, Lockjaw and Nullpolimo among others are very well known for catering to this crowd, stripping back almost all unnecessary animations and incredibly fine tuning in order to play as fast as possible. If you play Counter-strike and you are the guy that looks to change their mouse sensitivity to a very specific decimal pointed number, play 800 x 600, left handed model. That's kind of what these sprint Tetris games are like.

Battle is the final and has become more popular since the new millennium. 1 vs 1, Garbage line, T-spins, ‘x’-wide combos etc are all terms derived from this game mode. It’s easier to tell which era you grew up with Tetris pending if you prefer playing Battle or Marathon style Tetris. I would probably say Tetris Friends especially which began on Facebook in 2008 would be one of the key reasons people are so familiar with this game mode, but it stretches out even now in Cultris 2, or Puyo Puyo Tetris.

The Tetris Company (TTC)

Despite creator Alexey Pajitnov creating Tetris all the way back in 1984, it wasn’t until he and Henk Rogers formed “The Tetris Company” in 1996 that he could actually earn royalties from his creation.

From the perspective of a creator getting his due credit and worth from something so popular, it's understandable why TTC exists. Imagine having no power at all when a 100 companies flood the app store with 100 different versions of Tetris for example. Copyright is there to protect that name, and that style. 

Games that are TTC Licenced games, also called “Guideline Tetris” are called as such because there is a list of guidelines that TTC sets out for a developer that MUST BE FEATURED. These include(but are not limited to):

The Size of the play matrix

The Colour of the Tetriminos

The Ability to Hold Piece and show Ghost Piece

Use of the “7 System” (Also known as bag system) for the block spawning generation

System dictating how blocks rotate

etc 

If a lot of these seem really arbitrary it's because they are. For TTC it’s more important the game looks and feels the same all the time across all their versions, rather than trying to do anything actually interesting with the systems (foreshadowing).

This is where I feel TTC has fallen down. The rigidity of guidelines has created a limited design that has widened the division between the original creators and the current community.

I’ll put it this way, if we were happy with the official games, we wouldn’t have the need for the fan clones. That's also a reason why some of the best Tetris games out at the moment, aren’t the official ones.

TTC vs Community

From what I’ve understood (and keep in mind I am not a lawyer), while you can copyright the game itself and your expression of that form you cannot copyright a game design or mechanics.

Wouldn’t it be ridiculous if every shooter released had to follow the Call of Duty format? Thats because the Brand name and style of Call of Duty can be copyrighted, but first person perspective, sprint button and aim down sights cannot be.  And yet that's kinda what TTC does for Tetris. If any other developer did that to their game it would be seen as medieval thinking. Somehow though Tetris has avoided this criticism and instead of choking creativity it's somehow celebrated as protecting the brand.

What people want out of their Tetris game isn’t the same. Just consider what I said earlier about their being very different sub communities. Each finding what they like about Tetris and branching off to the experience they like.

But TTC doesn’t like that. TTC likes to tell you “this is what the game is, this is how you play it, because I said so”. That might sound hyperbolic but you know when the last time those guidelines were adjusted? 2009.

More than 11 years ago. Tell me how the hell you can think you are still in tune with fans when you haven’t revised your thoughts in ELEVEN years.

Tetris Ultimate was when I drew the line in the sand. I’d like to personally apologize now to “CeeCee”, the Community Manager from Ubisoft who was responsible for overseeing TU because I don’t think she was prepared for the amount of hate and turmoil that that development was going to produce. She had to find out the hard way that A) there is such a thing as a hardcore Tetris community and B) they can get incredibly vocal and toxic.

Every forum or social media outlet Ubisoft had was just bombarded with foul language and rage. Everything Ubisoft tried to post was followed up with unanswered questions and complaints.

It was when I first really felt like no one actually cared what was happening. Not TTC for over seeing the end product and not Ubisoft for being able to make a game that High-school students code as a school project. 

As a community we get stuck right in the middle

We can’t rely on TTC to re-format the game we want 

the developers don’t listen to the feedback given and/or are hamstrung by TTC

Any clone that actually makes an effort gets a cease and desists for their efforts.

The Pipe Dream of Tetris esport

When Tetris 99 dropped a couple of years ago, there was an interview Alexy Pajitnov did with US gamer and was quoted as saying: “I really want Tetris to establish itself as an esport. We’re getting there very slowly but surely.”

As someone who has been able to view this industry from a lot of different angles (Player, Viewer, Tournament Organiser, Coach, Commentator) it is laughable to suggest that Tetris is making any headway towards esports viability.

If they were concerned about fixing the player experience, some developer or TTC themselves would have invested some time into discovering why previous games' battle modes weren’t balanced well. Why only one stacking strategy ever proved optimal. Why something as simple as button remapping and Delay and Repeat actually matters.

Esport games need to have a good viewing experience as well, have they taken any clues from the successful games, and how they have a mode specifically with spectator tools to help a streamer, commentator or tournament organiser present and organise games?

A community is paramount to an esport. So why is it every Tetris game on release has trouble maintaining a player base after a couple of years. Why is it that some Clone games have lasted much longer. 

The short answer is they have no idea about what it takes to get into esports, and none of their actions suggest they are even making any headway. If I released this article 5 years ago, the challengers are exactly the same as they have ever been.

Final Words

Leaving was one of the hardest things I had to decide but I felt stuck. On one side is a community of dedicated and talented people who yell into the void hoping for things to change. On the other side, the mainstream that seems almost unwilling or blindsided that there could possibly be anything wrong with a game as “perfect” as Tetris.

No one has ever been able to put pressure on TTC to change. Not mainstream media, not its player base (which is mainly casual), and no creator has had enough financial backing to fight a C&D to make a game that the community wants.

I love my life now in fighting games and esports, but I wish my old compatriots and peers could have what I always wanted for the game. For it to be better than what they have had to put up with.

[sierraphantom]

This is a little late, but I felt like looking through all of the games I played last year since I actually played games that weren’t Kingdom Hearts. So, here are my top ten games of 2017!

10. Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue

This was the remaster I was not expecting to get so soon, but I’m still happy I got it. The movie based on Unchained Key was fine; it was not as boring as the 358/2 and Re:coded ones, but it was super confusing and I don’t usually get confused by the stories in Kingdom Hearts. The small story for Aqua was a great look into how Kingdom Hearts 3 is going to be in terms of gameplay and I like what I see so far. Most of all, I loved Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance HD. I’m happy I can play my second favorite game in the series on my PS4 and see The World Ends With You characters in HD.

9. Zero Escape: The Nonary Games

This actually a collection of two visual novel/puzzle games from the same series: 999 and Virtue’s Last Reward. Virtue’s Last Reward is basically the same, but 999 is a complete upgrade from it’s Nintendo DS counterpart with new HD art, full voice acting, and a much needed branching story graph to keep track of what endings you got and a way to jump to different parts of the story. The games themselves are basically a collection of escape room puzzles, but with great stories and interesting characters. You’ll always be wondering who you can trust and who will kill you.

8. Puyo Puyo Tetris

Puyo Puyo Tetris is a combination of the puzzle games Puyo Puyo and Tetris. You can play both modes as well as one where you play both at the same time. There is also a story mode that’s kind of nonsensical, but also enjoyable, even if the last chunk of it is super hard. This game taught me how to be decent at Tetris!

7. Night in the Woods

Night in the Woods is an adventure indie game with a really cool art style and story. You play as Mae who comes home from college without warning. She has a hard time talking about why she came home and tends to avoid explaining. She winds up hanging out with some friends who stayed in their hometown and from there, you can choose which friend you want to hang out with each day. This game dives into some tough topics like mental illness, the future, and death, but is still an enjoyable experience.

6. Tokyo Dark

Tokyo Dark is a neat, point and click indie game with horror and mystery elements I backed on Kickstarter. You play as a detective whose looking into the case of her missing partner while also stumbling into supernatural stuff surrounding a mask, a cult, and a ghost girl. It has eleven endings and I still need to go back and get them. If you like horror in concept, but get spooked easily like me, there’s only one instance I would call a jumpscare so if you want to play it, you should.

5. Persona 5

There isn’t much I can say that other people haven’t already, but this game was an experience oozing with style and amazing characters. I loved all of the main characters and seeing as much of their stories as I could with the confidant system. The voice work was also amazing with talent like Xander Mobus, Max Mittelman, Erica Lindbeck, and many more. They made the characters sound so realistic. This is an JRPG that I feel I can recommend to anyone.

4. Dishonored: Death of the Outsider

I know this is technically DLC for Dishonored 2, but you can buy it separately so I��ll count it. I loved getting to play as Billie Lurk as she is the most relatable protagonist Dishonored has seen yet. Going from playing as royalty to someone who grew up on the streets was a welcome change. Also, she’s bisexual and that’s awesome. There were new environments to explore and plenty of smaller quests in each chapter. Even though it was shorter than Dishonored 2, I still had just as much fun with it.

3. Life is Strange: Before the Storm

Deck Nine Games did such a good job that I like this game more than the original. It’s a prequel to Life is Strange, focusing on Chloe meeting Rachel Amber and it’s very gay. It wasn’t just a kiss at the end, it was gay most of the game (based on your choices). Deck Nine did a great job writing their gay characters and writing teenagers better than the first game. There was much less awkward dialogue. You also get to play D&D with two of the coolest characters in the first episode.

My complaints with the game are really only issues that come about from it being a prequel from another studio. Chloe’s stepdad is a misogynist and gross, but because of events in the first game, they still have to try to make him forgivable, but it doesn’t work too well. I don’t want to spoil anything for either game, but knowing some things from the first game just made me sad while playing this one so I would actually suggest playing Before the Storm before the original.

2. Tales of Berseria

I loved Tales of Zestiria and it was my favorite Tales of game, but I might love Berseria more. This game was a lot more intense and I actually felt like something was at stake since Velvet was being tracked down by the exorcists while trying to do all she needed to do so she could kill Artorius. Sorey from Zestiria was a little too happy and optimistic, especially while going up against a guy called the Lord of Calamity. Yeah, Velvet was angry, but rightfully so after watching her brother be killed by her mentor and then being locked up for like 3 years for turning into a daemon.  

The main characters are all outcasts in someway and I love them all very much. It was especially nice to see Eizen and Zaveid before the events of Tales of Zestiria and it was cool to see the connections to the previous game since it takes place in the same world. This game had twists and moments that made me cry and I recommend you play it. By the way, the voice cast is amazing (maybe not Kamoana though)!

1. Xenoblade Chronicles 2

It was tough to choose between Tales of Berseria and Xenoblade 2 for number one. The tie breaker was how much time I spent playing it. With 66 hours in Tales of Berseria and 122 hours in Xenoblade 2, Xenoblade 2 wins.

I personally liked the first Xenoblade’s style more, but the story is just as good and I think they made some good tweaks to the gameplay and combat (although I miss using foresight during battle). When I played the first one and Xenoblade X, I got stuck grinding a lot during the end, causing me to take almost month long breaks between play sessions. With Xenoblade 2, I had to do some grinding near the end, but I had quests left that were fun and gave me little stories about the Blades I had collected.

My only big complaints with the game would be some of the super sexualized designs on the girls and Tora’s weird maid fetish (which would be fine if Poppi wasn’t affected by it). I love everything about Tora, except that. Riki from the first game is going to have to stay as my favorite main character nopon.