Hitman 2 Review – A Worthy Investment For Expert Executioners

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Tetris Effect Review – A Dazzling Reimagining

Whether on CRT monitors, HDTVs, or the Game Boy’s monochromatic display, Tetris has long been a reliable source of entertainment (and jaw-clenching stress) for puzzle-seeking players. Its elegant simplicity has made it an enduring success, but with Tetris Effect, Monstars Inc. and Resonair shows that it’s possible to wring a few surprises from the classic game while respecting its primordial core. Tapping into their mastery of melding flashy audiovisual presentations with interlinked gameplay, the team has created a breathtaking interpretation of Tetris that makes the game feel fresh.

In Tetris Effect’s showcase mode, Journey, you travel through a variety of vignettes while playing Tetris. The sound builds and morphs as you play, accompanied by dazzling visuals. A wintry theme might incorporate the rhythmic sounds of crunching snow as you set blocks in place, with jingling bells sounding with their rotations. You delve deeper into a space capsule while you clear lines, as snippets of transmissions play in sync with the thumping soundtrack and your positioning of the blocks. The tetronimos change with each level, too, though those are just cosmetic adjustments. Functionally, a block is a block, whether it’s made of shimmering bubbles or rotating cogs. 

It’s hypnotic and wonderful, and a fantastic partner to the “in the zone” sensation that accompanies particularly good games of Tetris. I found myself instinctively rotating blocks in sync with the beat, and while it didn’t offer any benefits as far as scores went, it pulled me deeper into the game. The beats build and recedes like a great concert, culminating in a final level that is nothing short of magnificent. The visuals are amazing on traditional displays, but having your entire field of view enveloped by exploding particles and warping backdrops adds to the immersion – something I never thought I’d be concerned with in TetrThe biggest tweak to the overall formula in Journey is the time-stopping Zone mechanic, which gives you precious time to fix a few blunders or to finesse your way to even higher scores. One of my favorite things about Tetris is how you can extricate yourself from seemingly impossible situations; effective use of Zone makes those moments even more frequent. You have to earn it first, however, by clearing lines the old-fashioned way. Still, it’s a good thing to have in your back pocket for when you need it. 

 

A variety of other options offer further twists on Tetris’ core. In Sprint, you try to clear 40 lines as quickly as possible. Marathon mode challenges you to eliminate 150 lines, which is easier said than done. In Purify, you have to clear dark blocks from the field by clearing lines around them. Mystery mode is one of my favorites even though it made me want to punch walls; random effects like bombs, reversed controls, and other nuisances crop up as you play a marathon session. Even though you’re ultimately just clearing lines in all of these modes, they’re a fun and rewarding way to mix things up when you hit a wall. While I’d argue it would largely be missing the point, you can turn down the visual effects and music and just play a great game of Tetris, too, with a variety of customization options such as how many blocks appear in the preview panes and how rotation works once a tetronimo lands.

The fundamentals may be recognizable, but Tetris Effect feels like something new rather than another reskin of the same old game. The presentation is such a natural fit for the gameplay, and it adds an unexpected layer of emotion. Monstars Inc. and Resonair should be commended for taking a calculated risk and delivering its own unique take on a gaming standard.

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The Quiet Man Review – The Sound Of Failure

Not every game makes it as far as release. Even the biggest and most successful studios cancel projects when they aren’t shaping up. Those games may never see the light of day, but curious gamers can find footage of many abandoned titles online – and The Quiet Man reminds me of those videos. With a mishmash of awful storytelling and mechanics, this narrative-infused brawler plays like a failed proof-of-concept prototype. Even though it has technically released, The Quiet Man doesn’t feel finished; the entire experience is a series of cascading embarrassments that make you wonder how it escaped cancellation.

You play as Dane, a deaf man who beats up a bunch of people while chasing after a woman who gets kidnapped by a masked man. She looks like his mom for some reason, and also Dane’s friend and a cop are involved. I apologize for the vagueness in that description, but despite The Quiet Man’s attempt to be a narrative experience, it does basically nothing to convey its story.

For your first playthrough (which takes about three hours), the mixture of live-action and in-game cutscenes have no dialogue or subtitles. You’re left to watch these low-budget exchanges and wonder who the characters are, what they are doing, and how they are related to each other. This leaves you completely disengaged from what is happening. Imagine queuing up a few supplementary webisodes for a TV show you’ve never watched, then turning the volume off; that’s what to expect from The Quiet Man in terms of storytelling quality and production values.

One might argue that the lack of dialogue helps simulate Dane’s own experience with the events. However, people talk to Dane and he clearly understands what is being said to him; he smiles, frowns, and otherwise reacts in most scenes. That means everyone knows what’s happening except you, so the silence only serves to deny players insight. A second playthrough (which was patched in a week after release) adds in the missing dialogue, but here’s the problem: The disjointed, dreamlike tale you weave in your head is probably better than the real story, which is saturated with awful writing and laughably strained attempts at coolness. The Quiet Man is not worth playing even one time, and understanding its terrible narrative better certainly doesn’t make it worth playing two times.

 

When you aren’t spacing out during wordless exchanges, you’re participating in simple hand-to-hand combat. However, even basic brawling is beyond The Quiet Man’s capabilities. You can kick, punch, grab, and use takedowns, but how you attack is largely inconsequential. Enemies are stupid and lack variety, so you can just pound them with little thought or fear of reprisal. Battles are also short and predictable, so you don’t get a sensation of building up momentum. You usually just beat up a few bad guys – all of which are lazy stereotypes – before triggering the next cutscene or briefly walking through the lifeless environments.

Even worse, fights always have something that isn’t working correctly. Enemies warp to their positions during animations, phase through objects, or stand there waiting to get hit. The controls are sluggish and unresponsive, and the camera seems determined to periodically hide your opponents. While this all frustrated me at first, I gradually became resigned to the repetitive encounters and barely functional combat, and it’s hard to be frustrated when you don’t care.

The Quiet Man’s gameplay package is sloppy and boring, and its story is so bad that it needs to be buried in a second playthrough because it’s more tolerable when you don’t understand it. I want to call The Quiet Man a farce, but farces are funny. This game is just a conceptual catastrophe that does everything wrong and nothing interesting.

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