Despite my complaints with Tetris Evolution I ended up renting it because my wife is a big fan of Tetris. We played for a while the other night and the game itself plays fine. I’ve heard some people complaining about the 360 controller not working well for Tetris, but I did not have any issues with it. It plays as well as any version I’ve played on a console before.

The game does offer a lot of play modes and customization. Besides the standard “Marathon” mode, which is the standard playing most of us are use to, there are 6 other game modes that offer different scoring variations. The Cascade and Hot Line modes are not my style, but Ultra and Go Low are pretty fun variations. In addition to the mode and scoring variations there are numerous other ways to customize the game to play exactly how you want. You can turn ghost on, allow for endless rotating, turn on garbage, turn a grid on, and more. Also, you can customize your background with your own pictures or video clips. Personally, I don’t see then need for playing a slide show of my photos in the background as it is just a distraction from the game, but Lumines Live had similar it so I expect other puzzle games will begin to pick up on this trend. I guess you could use the slide show to your advantage by trying to distract your opponents, but other than that I don’t see the benefit of having a changing background.

If your a fellow Achievement Whore then keep in mind that Tetris Evolution is not a quick 1000 points. The achievements are mostly for getting a specific scores in the different game modes. Each game mode has a few different scores you need to reach to get all of the achievements. The lower ones are pretty easily attainable, but some of the higher scores are going to take a lot of work.

That brings us to the multiplayer. I played against my wife for a while on out 32 inch SD TV and did not have any trouble. It played smoothly. We had a good time trying to outlast each other in Marathon and then trying to beat each other’s high scores in Ultra mode. After she got done playing I tried a few matches on Xbox Live and it played just as smoothly. I could not tell any difference between playing online and playing split screen. Given that the most people playing together over Live is only 4 I did not expect to have any issues with lag (like you might see in a 14 player room of Rainbow Six: Vegas) and my expectations were met. Finally, Tetris fans can prove they are as good as they say they are by playing opponents all over the world.

Even though I am having fun playing Tetris Evolution I’m still not sure it is worth $30. Even with all the customizations and online play I still fine myself spending most of my time playing the standard marathon mode. I would much rather pay $10 or $15 bucks for an Xbox Live Arcade version. They should have left out all of the options to play videos and pictures as the background, and then put it on XBLA. If you are a huge Tetris fan, or if you need a version of Tetris to play in HD, then Tetris Evolution is probably for you. For anyone else, wait a few months and pick up a used copy.