by Scott Bennett

Created on: February 20, 2007   Last Updated: April 25, 2011

There are many ways to classify games and sort them into Best Game Ever Worst Game ever lists.

At the end of the day though it has to come down to most popular. Popularity will only ever follow great games and while it is true that some great games have not been popular (Ikaruga, Ico, Rez, Pikmin.) It is supremely rare for a popular game not to have features of greatness.

On these terms, then only Tetris can claim to be the greatest game ever. There is virtually no gamer who has not done their time at the Tetris coalface. All of us sentence ourselves to the hard manual labour of mining away at the constantly falling blocks.

Many has been the psychological article on just what buttons Tetris presses to make any member of the human race with thumbs (and I am sure more than a fair few without) keep bashing away at the Sisyphean wall being constantly built before them. Unlike Sisyphus though the player chooses to push their ball up the hill reveling in the moment of release as it teeters on the brink of collapse before rolling back down to begin the task afresh.

Tetris is almost never mentioned seriously as a contender in these lists because it almost defies the modern concept of what a game is. There is no avatar to imprint on, no high concept reason for the doing of the task, no achievable end to the game no interminable cut scenes (just imaging the back-story of the long one played out over a ten minute CGI extravaganza) and no enemy to best save one's own failings.

And that is why Tetris is great. It signifies the struggle between the self who wants to let things go hang loose and mess it up and the front we put on to others of our industrious nature, our sense of order and our control over the world around us. Playing Tetris removes the curtain we drape over ourselves and reveals that in the end we are all failures and we are all capable of being overwhelmed.

It is also wicked fun to play and the only game your mum will play with you and we all like playing with our mums.

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