Puyo Puyo Tetris 2S Hands-on Preview – Hands-on Preview
Playing Tetris with a mouse is surprisingly fun.
The Nintendo Switch 2 will have a puzzle game at launch and it’s coming in the form of Puyo Puyo Tetris 2S. This game is an enhanced version of the Puyo Puyo Tetris sequel that was originally released at the end of 2020. At a recent hands-on event, I tried the new Puyo Tetris Doubles mode and also got to experience the joy of dropping tetriminos with the Joy-Con 2 mouse functionality.
Puyo Tetris Doubles is the game’s new 2 versus 2 multiplayer mode. Each duo gets their own Tetris or Puyo Puyo board and must carefully work together to defeat their opponents. Each player, on the same team, gets their own unique queue of Puyo blobs or tetriminos. However, the hold piece is shared by each duo. This mode is very chaotic and it seems like good communication with your teammate will be very helpful if you wish to win. My teammate and I were constantly yelling at each other to drop pieces in certain spots. I was not great with my placement of blocks making it quite difficult to survive. Having a shared hold piece was a bit frustrating because I’d hit the hold button and discover my teammate had already used the tetrimino I wanted. The shared puzzle board gameplay reminded me a bit of the Connected multiplayer mode in Tetris Effect. Of course in that game, you only shared the game board for a short period of time.
During my entire playthrough, I used mouse controls. Dragging the mouse horizontally left and right was how you determined block placement. I found the mouse controls gave me very precise movement and were extremely helpful for quick movements to the other side of the board. However, small nudges to the left or right occasionally did not work exactly as I had envisioned. I rotated pieces using the R button and performed the hard drop by pressing down on the analog stick. You can also trigger the hard drop by dragging the mouse downward. Using mouse controls seems like a fun alternative to traditional controls, but I’m not sure they will make you a better player.
One other new feature is GameShare support. I didn’t get to try it out, but you’ll be able to commence a multiplayer session with 3 other systems (for a total of 4 players). It was unclear if the game only has local multiplayer GameShare support or if you’d also be able to share with friends online.
My short time with Puyo Tetris Doubles was a lot of fun. As someone who never delved into the puzzle sequel, it seems like there’s a ton of content for puzzle fans. At the end of my session, I inquired whether SEGA might offer an upgrade path to the 2S version for current Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 Switch owners. Sadly, SEGA does not currently have plans to offer such an upgrade.
