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PlayStation Couldn't Have Picked a Better Developer for the New 'Tetris'

The developer of 'Rez' is free to get weird with 'Tetris Evolve' for PSVR.

E3, the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo, starts on June 12, but the deluge of video game news that comes with it has already begun. Some of the most exciting news so far isn't some new, fancy first-person shooter, but an update to the timeless 80s arcade classic, Tetris. Sony released a psychedelic new trailer for the game, called Tetris Effect, this morning, and it's a more colorful, interesting vision of the 2D puzzle game than I had expected.

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Then again, the trailer starts with the words "From Tetsuya Mizuguchi," so maybe the sensory overload shouldn't be quite so surprising. Tetsuya Mizuguchi is best known for Rez, a classic Dreamcast game that replaces shooty-explodey sound effects with beats of an electronic music soundtrack. Playing a level of Rez is like performing an improvised jam session with your buddies from Daft Punk. Rez was ahead of its time back in 2001, but its 2017 remake, Rez Infinite, has become one of the most impressive VR games around. Even better, Mizuguchi and his team also made Lumines for the Sony PSP, which features both an electronic groove soundtrack and puzzle pieces that already worked a lot like Tetris.

Tetris Effect is coming out for PlayStation and, more importantly, PlayStation VR, this fall. With Mizuguchi's background, modern art and sound hardware, and the inherent trippiness of classic Tetris, Tetris Effect should be a serious brain-melter.