Tetris The Absolute: The Grandmaster 2/Pabst Blue Ribbon

Game: Tetris The Absolute: The Grandmaster 2, Arika, 2000, Arcade
Beer: Pabst Blue Ribbon, 24 fl. oz., 4.74% abv
# of beers consumed during play: 1
Level Reached: Oh, about level 5 or 6...
Level of Intoxication: Buzzed

Game
Tetris...Everyone knows Tetris. Everyone. Since the day it was brought to life, Tetris has been played by virtually everyone with access to eyeballs and opposable thumbs. In fact, even that can be called into question with some efforts to develop a braille version of Tetris. Let's just see someone try to do that with Sonic the Hedgehog. Eventually, the hardest of the hardcore decided they wanted a Tetris game that would test their abilities. Thus a little Japanese company known as Arika stepped to the plate in the late 90's and spawned the Tetris Grandmaster series of games. One thing's for sure, this ain't your granny's Tetris.

Gameplay
Well, anyone who has been conscious even briefly in the past couple of decades should intrinsically know the basic gameplay that is core to Tetris. A basin is presented to the player into which drop various shapes. Maneuvering said shapes in order to create seamless horizontal lines will result in those lines disappearing, giving points and allowing more room to drop yet more shapes, rinse and repeat. Allow the basin to fill to the top with shapes and the game ends. That's it. That's really all there is to it, at least on paper. Of course, that is also where the addictive draw lies, in the fact that Tetris, at its very center, is so simple in execution that the real game is a test of concentration, a gauge of one's own zen-like ability to blot out the world around them and completely focus on the singular task at hand. In my humble estimation, it is chess for a single player, it is the mastery of one's perception and the harnessing of one's logical abilities.
Tetris The Absolute: The Grandmaster 2 is the epitome of this ideal. The game is intended to come secondary to a player's own abilities, to in fact provide a foundation upon which one can achieve greater and greater feats of reasoning and concentration. This may sound like a lofty ideal, particularly in the face of videogames, but with the basis that is Tetris, the model can be refined and molded to suit any goal, any aim. Allow me to elaborate. For a few weeks now, I've been playing Tetris DS, a fun Nintendo-themed variant on Tetris. The game has many new modes, some great innovations, and an all around high fun factor. Certain conventions in gameplay have been made that support the higher-prioritized goal of fun such as allowing a piece to be rotated almost an infinite number of time before it locks, a lower concentration of "Z" and "S" shaped pieces, and preview windows for up to five upcoming pieces. For anyone who grew up on the Arcade, Game Boy, or NES versions of Tetris, the DS version is both familiar and much easier to play. In single sittings on Marathon mode, I've reached level 14 with around 140+ lines. This Tetris is forgiving, it's soft around the edges, it has Mario's endorsement.

In stark contrast, TGM is hard. It has a very limited amount of time before pieces lock, it has only a single piece preview, it provides a calculated balance of all pieces. It is a very fair game, being very carefully programmed to not cheat the player out of victory, but it is unforgiving nonetheless. TGM knows you are stupid, and will punish you in high fashion for it. In my time with it, I quickly learned that it throws persistent and clever players a bone every so often. If you manage to survive in standard mode for a number of lines, it'll give you special pieces that will collapse any holes you've built into the mass, delete odd or even lines, and even eradicate all of a certain piece from the gameboard. The game will then slow down the gravity for a bit. The game as a whole is balanced to punish thoughtless moves and to reward skill. Even the Standard mode isn't the ultimate ideal that TGM is aimed towards, the ultimate ideal that has attracted the best and brightest Tetris players. Grandmaster mode is.

Grandmaster mode is the gauntlet. Its levels start at 9 and count down through hundreds of lines of hate and agony. I made it to level 6 on my best run, with a block mass that looked like swiss cheese at a shooting range. The game's purity of purpose is full and clear in this mode, to become a backdrop to the player's own abilities, and to push those abilities in a highly predictable curve past any previous watermarks of achievement. This is the Tetris that challenges the player, that tests them, that sizes them up, and even more importantly, allows the player to objectively size themselves up with a transparency that no other version of Tetris can. As they build their skill, the player will ascend through the ranks, from numbers 9-1, to the S-ranks, and finally if they can attain a level of skill and concentration engendered to a scant few, the Grandmaster ranks.

I don't normally call to references outside of this site, but this is one case I'll make an exception in order to illustrate the point I'm trying to prove. Google "invisible tetris" and click on the first video link that comes up. That is TGM3, the sequel to the one I'm reviewing here. Watch it until the end. Yeah, that was the face I made too.

Graphics/Sound
I'll freely admit, this section is going to be pretty short. The entire premise of Tetris requires a bare minimum in graphic power, which is in a sense adhering to the absolute highest ideal that any videogame can aspire to. Many gamers and industry leaders champion the mantra that is gameplay over graphics, but few games are able to stand alone, playable and completely within context on literally any graphical platform.

TGM has graphics that aren't particularly awe-inspiring, but do serve a very utilitarian purpose. Each piece is differently colored, allowing the player to recognize at the barest glance which piece is which. This is pretty par for the course as far as Tetris games go, without this simple convention, it would be a nightmare attempting to make heads or tails between the "Z" and "S" pieces, as well as the "L" and backwards "L" pieces. what TGM does feature however, is the fact that the block mass is dimmer than active pieces and also has a white outline, allowing the savvy player to survey the entire board at a glance, which in the later levels, is all they have time for.

The backgrounds are nice, if not exactly noteworthy, and the menus and other non-Tetrisy assets are adequate, being if nothing else, not distracting from the task at hand.
The sound is also something which might be ignored out of hand at first, but which also comes with a layer of strategy within it. Each piece makes a distinct sound before it drops, allowing a skilled player to know what's coming without having to look at the preview window. Smooth and clever indeed.

Story
Tetris...story...right.

Okay, well since the game actually doesn't have any narrative story whatsoever, I'll give this space a little boost with a story about Tetris.

Tetris was invented by a bearded Russian man Named Alexey Pajitnov. He was working for the Soviet Academy of Sciences Computer Center when the idea struck him, and being the clever, lovable commie he was, set about with a couple of colleagues to manifest the game in a playable form. Unfortunately, the Russian government being what it was at the time, did not allow Alexey to make any money from his creation, which was, according to Russian copyright law, public domain. The game spread to all of Russia and other Eastern Bloc countries, often in the form of public kiosks that would attract enormous lines for just a few minutes of play. Many Western companies learned of Tetris's popularity and bought licensing rights for their respective territories, making millions off the game's worldwide popularity. Nintendo in particular made a mint from the game by making it a pack-in title for the original Game Boy. For literally decades, Mr. Pajitnov made nothing from the wildfire that was Tetris. He now lives in America. Imagine that.

Beer
For some reason, I've been doing a "beer chain" of sorts, I'll off-handedly mention one beer in a review and within the next week or two, I find myself reviewing it. While it does have an interesting energy all its own, I feel as though I'm foreshadowing myself and diminishing the impact of any new review I choose to publish. So with that in mind, I'm keeping my eye on the prize this time and I'll refrain from comparing the beer I'm reviewing against any other beers. I especially won't be mentioning any premium barley-pops, since I'm not exactly swimming in cash and the last thing I want to do is tempt the gods by uttering something unwholesomely expensive. It would be just my luck that some prankster demon would guide me into a store where there was nothing but expensive beer and I would be forced to sell my body on the street corner just to be able to make a review for you fickle bastards. And lest you allow your minds to wonder, no, I'm not cheap.

Pabst Blue Ribbon, whose name easily condenses to the convenient and simple initials PBR is one of the very, very inexpensive American beers on offer in virtually any store with a liquor license. It is widely available and easy to spot lurking in the case with all the other brewskis. The package design is spartan and bold, sporting the very popular red/white/blue color scheme found on many, many traditional American beers. The only thing that mars the purchasing experience is that I feel a strange hesitation when walking up to the counter with a tall can of PBR and a single pack of chocolate dessert cakes which rhyme with "ringers." I get this weird feeling that my purchases are being judged by the person behind the register. That my simple choices in the way of personal indulgences, without the benefit of context that I do this with a higher purpose in mind causes the clerk to inwardly make assumptions as to the fabric of my character and/or personal life. That perhaps these are the accessories of a deranged person, or possibly even a violent criminal. Pretty soon I'm dwelling on the subject as I drive home post-purchase. Not on my own proclivities, but on what would constitute a psychopath's shopping list. My mind swims with illogical combinations of normally innocuous store bought goods, items that purchased together in a certain arrangement and quantity paint a portrait of madness. I ruminate over this, wondering what kind of receipt indicates which sort of socio-psychological issue. And all at once, I begin to build the perfect list, one that would point to the most dangerous insane criminal on earth...and I promise myself I'm going to buy it someday, from as small and meek a clerk as possible...on or about midnight...just for kicks.

Anyway.

PBR's smell is basically that of a grain silo soaked in fermented water. The notes of malt and hops is pervasive, almost to the point of being overwhelming. It doesn't quite hit the olfactory senses the same way a 40 ounce of malt liquor would, but it's just enough to make me not want to drink it all the same. When I touched the can to my lips, it was all effervescence, water and sourness rolling down my throat like the huge boulder at the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark. The taste got progressively more deplorable as I went through the can, and really, by about halfway, I was choking the damn stuff down. Probably if I had gone the way of the underage drinker and just shotgunned the whole can, I could have avoided the slow torture that is having to taste this beer over the course of a full gaming session, but not only do I have no intention of shotgunning 24 ounces of Satan's piss, but I endure sip-by-sip agony specifically in the name of edifying you, my readers, with carefully worded insights into this niche hobby that is drinking alcohol and playing videogames. I'm all about self-sacrifice. How awesome is that?

At any rate, the feel this beer has in the oral cavity is pretty thin, tempered by the high degree of scrubbing bubbles action going on. And I think that's a pretty good synopsis of how this beer drinks: it makes my mouth feel like a dirty bathtub. The alcoholic content and resultant intoxication do nothing to save this beer from oblivion, the alcohol content is pretty paltry for something that tastes like all its strengths should lie in its ability to inebriate, and the drunk is a bent, uneasy feeling, with most of the agony hanging out in the lower intestine. All in all, a beer that, while arguably an American classic, should be avoided unless you happen to enjoy wholly unsatisfying drink.

The Matchup
So what do we have here? A review that just barely made the deadline? Well besides that, we have a game that manages to be arguably the greatest in the world, and--surprise of all surprises--a beer that does not. Tetris, particularly in the flavor sampled here is quite possibly the purest form a videogame can take. It shines with a luster that is most closely associated with very rare gemstones, and in terms of design triumphs, is just as valuable. The beer is dross, a simple concoction that isn't the absolute worst thing I've ever imbibed, but definitely sits well below the line marked tolerable. The great thing about such depths is that it's pretty easy to turn the other direction and go up from there, so at least in that regard, I'm looking forward to the next review.

Cheers/Game on.