Tetris Effect Review (PS5 / PSVR2) | Push Square

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Back when Tetris Effect launched on PS4, it was with full support for the original PSVR. At the time, we thought it was glorious, but realistically, the hardware's limitations meant the picture was never super clear. The spectacle of this flashy take on the familiar falling block puzzle game wasn't lost on us, though, and it remains a truly excellent game, no matter how or where you play it. That being said, the new PS5 version — with full support for PSVR2 — has made us fall in love with it all over again.

The experience is largely identical to the earlier PSVR iteration, but the difference in picture quality is stark. PSVR2's improved resolution and HDR support mean the game looks much, much sharper. It's always been a gorgeous game, but the virtual reality effects — particles swirling around you, jewels hanging down from either side, dolphins leaping out of the water, suddenly teleporting to the moon — are heightened by the new headset. It's wonderful.

Slightly less successful is the implementation of the PSVR2 Sense Controllers. Upon first play, they didn't seem to work at all; strangely, they had no buttons assigned in the Controls settings. A weird bug, but easily solved by restoring the defaults. Playing Tetris Effect with them is fine, but the sticks are fairly sensitive, and we frequently found ourselves hard-dropping tetriminoes by mistake. The DualSense is the way to go here — all hail the D-pad. At the very least, the haptic feedback in both controllers works nicely.

A nifty new feature utilises PSVR2's eye-tracking; close your eyes for about a second, and when you open them again, you'll enter the game's Zone state. You can still just press a button to enable it, but it's pretty cool you can use a simple