I’ve been playing a fair bit of Tetris DS online against a wide variety of people at different skill levels, which is a lot of fun. Playing online seems to require a somewhat less forward-thinking style of play than that to which I’ve been accustomed; you simply don’t have the luxury of thinking about where to put things for more than a split second. You have to kind of play each piece in turn, clearing out single lines wherever possible, keeping things from piling up too much as your opponent clears lines. If you spend too much time waiting for a Long One, you’re going to lose. If you get the wrong Z, you just have to stick it somewhere and work from that point up without worrying too much about it; if you spend too long finding a painless spot to stick it, you’re going to lose.
This rapid-paced playing style demands some serius speed. I’ve gotten considerably faster in a pretty short time, but I’m at the point now where I can’t physically push the buttons any faster. I’m still not fast enough to keep up with some of my opponents, though, so I’m looking to gain a little speed in the only area I can.
Historically I’ve only ever rotated pieces in one direction. My brain knows exactly how many button presses it takes to orient the pieces the way I need them, but often times it takes 3 button presses to orient something when only a single rotation in the opposite direction would have sufficed. Clearly I need to learn to rotate both ways if I expect to gain any speed.
Today I spent some time playing against the computer making every effort to rotate pieces in either direction, but I’m having more trouble than I expected to. It is slowing me way down and my brain hurts from the effort of thinking about which direction I should rotate it. Most times, I rotate it the wrong way, causing even more confusion when it ends up in a completely different position than I expected.
This is incredibly frustrating and I do not look forward to competing like this so I may have to just resign myself to being slow, making up for my slighly slower-than-optimum speed by putting things in better places in the first place.
Do you rotate both directions when you play, or just the one?
(T-shirt idea: “I go both ways,” spelled out in Tetris blocks.”)
