BlockOut

[Melf]

this is what i do not like about a ten point grading scale for game reivews

blockout is a bad game, i think pretty much everyone agrees

but is it really 2 out of 10 bad?

name a game that gets a score of 2 and a game that gets a score of 3 then explain the difference and prove that every rating is treated the same.

there is far too much nuance, both games simply suck

id give blockout a 2 out of 5, below average but not among the worst games ever made

What's the difference between a 3 and a 4?

The review manifest explains each score, and while I'd prefer a five-point scale, I'm not about to redo 568 review scores.

[Benjamin]

Read our full review and do yourself a favor, stick with Tetris.

Just noticed this. Despite all the bashing, I don't see these same people forking over $10,000 for some Sega 16-bit Tetris just the same.

Hey, Castle Crashers! Lemme know if you need help with the multi-player achievement.

[knicksfan89]

f22 interceptor had this same problems, EA could not do polygon games correctly, it is not a bad game per se because of the awesome soundtrack but it is still a dissapoitnment and a confusing game to play 4 out of 10 for me

[Anthall]

This game is really slow and sluggish, and the gameplay is not much better.

I'd perfer the normal Sega Genesis Tetris game anyday.

[Ecco]

I thought this game was ok.

*shrugs*

I guess you have to keep in mind that the 3D perspective would have been amazing in 1991. And there's a lot of novelty value, with the game trying something unusual.

[Sik]

Since the thread was brought up: this game needs badly to be hacked to support the 6 button controller (・・　) Have X/Y/Z rotate the other way, and Mode button to drop pieces - then Start can be freed up to pause (being unable to pause is a severe annoyance, especially if you aren't on an emulator).

The framerate is not so great, but honestly most of the problems come from the game's concept itself. 3D tetris is just too hard, humans simply aren't that good at full blown 3D. Though I recall the last time I played it (a couple of years ago) I was doing better than usual... I wonder how I'd fare now.

[Ecco]

^I got the impression that the "framerate" was just a choppy animation, and not really framerate -- I could be wrong but that was my impression.

Actually the whole game seems like we're just going through different drawings, and it doesn't seem like there's anything 3D at all. Which I think is a cool approach.

Do other people get the same kind of impression?

[Sik]

Nah, it's 3D, the falling piece is a wireframe rendered in real time which is why it's annoyingly sluggish. The board is also real 3D (at least the placed pieces), although only rendered when a new piece is placed, and you can't even see the sides until they're high enough so they may look like 2D squares at first.

I suppose one could try to make the wireframe out of line-shaped sprites to gain some speed (should be much easier on the CPU), but it's probably not trivial to do. Better to attempt on homebrew instead.