About:
Games are an important part of living; otherwise life would be boring as hell. You might be a fan of video games, card or dice games, board games or even games you used to play on the playground as a kid. There's always a game that holds a special place with us.
On February 20th, talk about a game you play or used to play; tell us how it works and share your love of the game with the rest of us. It can be any kind of game you like, from World of Warcraft to Hopscotch, from Monopoly to Blackjack and everything else in between. Tell us what you love about that game.
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It didn't take me long to think of a game I play often and love--Tetris.
Tetris is a game based on a set of seven tetrominoes (also called tetriminoes) built out of four blocks that "fall" down a ten-wide grid of squares. The objective is to get those pieces (called I, J, L, O, S, T, and Z) perfectly lined up by turning them 90 degrees either clockwise or counterclockwise. When they line up, ten altogether in a row, the blocks disappear.
All the player has to do is make sure those blocks keep falling onto each other in the right way and prevent the stack of tetrominoes from hitting the top of the grid, which is when the game ends (usually). There are special moves (tetrises, where you clear four lines at the same time using the I tetromino, are among the highest-scoring line clears; t-spins are when you turn a T tetromino so it acts like a key in a lock and clears lines otherwise un-clearable) but the concept is simple: Just line up the tetrominoes as they fall.
One of the things I really love about this game is that it gets as hard as you want it to. There's always a level above you or more points to score by using the aforementioned special moves. Some of the game types (Sprint, Ultra) end after a timed period, but others allow you to continue playing as long as you can keep your stack of tetrominoes from the top of the grid.Tetris Survival is my all-time favorite (my high score is 652k), since after Level 20 there's a bonus Level 21, which is infinite and a really fun challenge because the grid blacks out for longer and longer sets of time, requiring you to memorize the positions of every block. Marathon (high score 707k), also one of my faves, is similar, but its 15 levels are much longer by about 50 or so lines toward the end of the game and there's no infinite level.
Have you ever played Tetris? If so, do you have a favorite version (e.g., Survival, Battle, Ultra, Arena)? If not, do you think you'll ever try it out? Are you a fan of puzzle games or do you avoid them like the plague?
-----The Golden Eagle
