Tetris Water Torture (Wetrix (N64))

Name: MykReeve

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Product:	Wetrix (N64)
Date:	16/08/01 (102 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Attractive graphics, Easy to learn

Disadvantages: Repetitive, Soon gets dull, Not enough variety to gameplay

As the Nintendo 64 takes its final gasping breaths of life, the second hand market continues to expand. Just looking in a branch of Gamestation or Computer Exchange reveals a surprising wealth of N64 titles, many of which are available for under £10. Now, I'm a sucker for puzzle games, so I couldn't resist the offer of 'Wetrix' for just £8.

'Wetrix' attempts to expand on the basic game of Tetris, putting it into three-dimensions, and adding the dimension of water. Yes, that's right, water. It's an odd concept for a puzzle game, but one which largely works. Unfortunately, despite being more complex than the game of Tetris, Wetrix becomes tediously repetitive very quickly, and not even the game's extensive range of options can prevent the tedium.

THE CONCEPT

In the game of 'Wetrix', you are presented with a square playing area, upon which you drop a series of pieces. You can rotate these pieces in the plane of the playing area, and move them within the plane. As the pieces drop, you can judge where they will fall from the shadow they cast on the playing area below.

The basic pieces that drop onto the playing area are called "uppers" and "downers". No, this isn't some Hunter S Thompson/William S Burroughs nightmare world; the "uppers" raise the ground level of the playing area where they fall, the "downers" lower it. By using these pieces, you can create walled-in areas on the playing area, which can be used to contain the other main 'piece' that can drop onto the playing area – water bubbles. Groups of water bubbles drop onto the playing area, releasing water onto its surface. If you've created large walled-in areas to contain the water, then it will form a lake in the playing area. If you haven't, the water will run off the playing area into a drain, shown on the right hand side of the screen. When the drain is filled with
water, it's game over.

So, that's your basic game. But, of course, there's more to it than that. You can only have a certain mass of land on your playing area at any one time, and the mass is shown by an "Earthquake" meter on the left hand side of the screen. When you've reached the maximum permissible mass of land on the playing area, an earthquake occurs, removing much of the land mass, and rearranging that which remains. Needless to say, much of the water that you'd accumulated on the playing area will no longer be contained by the remaining land, so an earthquake is to be avoided at all costs!

Water can also be removed by dropping "fireballs" into your lakes. The fireballs evaporate all of the water within the lake it's dropped into, and this is where most of your points come from. A few points are awarded for each piece you drop onto the playing area, but most come from the evaporation of lakes.

Another type of piece, which you are sometimes given to put on your playing area, is the "bomb". Bombs destroy all of the land mass beneath the area where they are placed on the playing area, creating a hole, through which water can flow directly into the drain. These holes can be repaired easily using uppers, but can be expanded by the use of downers. If you place a bomb on a pre-existing hole, then you get a re-bomb – several more bombs drop at random locations onto the playing area!

As you progress through the game, you begin to be given "mystery pieces". During gameplay, the next piece is always shown in the lower right hand corner of the screen. However, mystery pieces are represented by a question mark, and usually consist of a mixture of uppers and downers.

Also, as the game progresses, you begin to get rainfall on the playing area, continually upping the water level across the playing surface. You also get "ice cubes", which fall onto your
playing area and freeze the lake into which it falls. If the ice cube falls onto a dry area of your playing area, you get a "dry ice bonus". Also, mines fall occasionally into your lakes as the game progresses. These float harmlessly in your lake, until you evaporate it with a fireball, upon which they explode, like a bomb.

There are two main ways to score bonus points – the rubber ducky and the rainbow. To get rubber duckys (their spelling, not mine), you have to create a deep lake – only one rubber ducky can exist in lake, and their presence multiplies all points scored by two. Rainbows appear when there is a certain volume of water present on your playing surface, and their presence multiplies all points scored by ten.

At fixed time intervals during play, the level increases. Scores in each level are multiplied by the level number, and upon beginning some levels you are given "smart bombs", indicated by an icon next to the level number. Smart bombs can be used at will to reset the playing area to how it was at the beginning of the game – i.e. no water and a level playing area. With each level, however, comes an increase in the speed with which pieces fall toward the playing area, giving you less time to position them.

THE GAME

There are essentially five different play modes in 'Wetrix', as well as a practice mode.

Basic gameplay, offered by the 'Classic' option, proceeds essentially as I have described above. You are presented with a flat, blank playing area (in a Wheatus-esque yellow and pink checkerboard pattern, though the colours change with each level), and the game proceeds until the drain is filled. Your objective is to score as high a score as possible.

For more of a challenge, once you've got used to the rules of the game, you can try the 'Pro' option. It's a lot tougher than the 'Classic' option, in that you start at level
5, so pieces drop more rapidly.

The 'Challenge' option lets you play a series of challenges. Four of these simply consist of trying to survive a challenge – either a specific period of time, or a specific number of pieces. You can choose a 1 minute, 5 minutes, 100 pieces or 500 pieces challenge. The other two challenges involve trying to rack up as high a score as possible with preset series of pieces – ideal for comparing your playing ability with friends.

The 'Handicap' option lets you play the game with added hazards. Two of the handicap options let you play with a preset raised playing areas, two start you off on a playing area with a defrosting patch of ice on it, one is a completely randomly contoured playing area, and one begins with a series of randomly positioned holes in the playing area.

The final play mode is the 'Multiplayer' option, which allows to two people to play against each other on separate playing areas. The screen is divided into two halves vertically. The loser is the first player whose drain fills.

The 'Practice' mode is very nicely designed. There is a basic play option, which is identical to the 'Classic' mode, except that the level never changes, pieces don't drop automatically toward the playing area, and the water gauge doesn't fill. This is ideal for familiarising yourself with the basic rules of the game. In addition to this, there are a series of eight lessons, introducing all of the pieces and teaching you good strategies for gameplay. These lessons can either be undertaken with the player's playing area filling the whole screen, or with the player's playing area on the left hand side, and a computer-controlled demonstration on the right hand side. This latter option is extremely useful for learning good strategies for racking up high scores!

GAMEPLAY

One aspect of the game which I was concerned about with '
Wetrix' was the three-dimensional presentation. In many other three-dimensional puzzle games, the perspective can frequently be frustratingly confusing, leading to the inadvertent misplacing of pieces. In 'Wetrix', however, I was pleasantly surprised by how well presented the perspective was – the shadows beneath falling pieces made it very easy to see where the piece would drop.

However, later in the game, once you've got a rainbow present on your playing area, and pieces are dropping more rapidly, it can become a lot more difficult to work out the perspective, and ensure that pieces drop where you want them to.

When you have leaks in the walls on the playing area, arrows appear around the edge to show where the water is leaking into the drain. This is a very handy feature for working out which parts of your playing area need building up. However, these arrows appear when any water leaks off the playing area, even small amounts produced by rainfall, which can sometimes mean that you pay attention to inappropriate areas of the playing area.

Fundamentally, the game is quite fun, and a quick game of 'Wetrix' is enjoyable. However, the game doesn't have much longevity. Once you've played one game, you're unlikely to want to play another. One of my main problems with the basic gameplay is that pieces are selected at random (though there are more uppers toward the beginning of the game), which means that you can at times be given a series of bombs in a row. The bombs are too powerful, often disrupting large portions of the playing area – so rather than providing a challenge, they are just spectacularly frustrating.

As with 'Tetris', where you can be frustrated by a long wait for one of the long, thin pieces – yes, you're not the only one who always tries to get rid of four lines in one go – in 'Wetrix', you can often find yourself waiting for an upper while
water floods through bombed holes in the playing area.

The 'Handicap' options in the game don't really expand enough on the basic gameplay mode. Essentially, gameplay is identical to the basic mode, apart from the initial starting point. 'Pro' is identical to 'Classic' gameplay, except that you start from level 5. 'Challenge' does expand slightly on the basic gameplay concept in that there is a different challenge from just getting a high score, however, there is no ultimate reward for success at a challenge, so succeeding just provides a short-lived hollow feeling of smugness... not an unfamiliar sensation for gamers...

CONCLUSIONS

'Wetrix' is a nice idea. It's very nicely presented, and largely succeeds in adding the third dimension to a puzzle game, which is no small feat. The music and graphics are very good. However, where the game falls down is in not offering enough variety in gameplay. Essentially, despite offering several different modes of play, none of them really introduce anything new, and the game becomes stale very quickly.

Load times are very fast, because the game is cartridge based, which is something of a mercy. This means that the game is quick to start up, if you just want one quick game... which is handy, since it's likely that the one quick game is all that you'll want.

Overall, this is a game you are likely to enjoy playing, supposing that you enjoy 'Tetris'-style puzzlers. However, the tedium of its repetitive gameplay means that you're unlikely to want to spend more than ten minutes or so on it in one session.

Summary: