In fact,
Tetris Party Live's multiplayer aspects don't even stray that far from the standard
Tetris gameplay style. When playing against an opponent, either A.I.-driven or human-controlled (via the Nintendo WiFi network), the only affect you have on your challenger, and vice versa, is that rows collapsed on one player's board appears on the other's. The game still comes down to keeping your pile of blocks as low as possible and trying to clear out as many rows as you can. This does mean that the goal is slightly shifted. Instead of simply trying to play as long as possible, you are just trying to outlast your opponent.
As for the rest of the gameplay, blocks fall from the top of the grid, you rotate them and position them how you want, and if you happen to form a solid row when the piece is in place, then that row goes away. There are a couple of gameplay options you can fiddle with for slightly varying effects - but for the most part, it's simply Tetris.
As for those options, in Single Player Mode, you can turn the Endless option on or off. When on, you simply try and last as long as possible and attempt to earn as many points as you can before your blocks reach the top. Of course, the longer you last, the faster the blocks fall, so quick reflexes are a must to make any significant progress in this mode. With Endless turned off, you simply play until you have cleared 150 lines. In this case, how well you do is based primarily on how quickly you cleared those lines and what your score is at the end (remember, you get bonuses for multiple rows cleared at a time, as well as a bonus for actually clearing the board).
The only other interesting options the game provides are in the multiplayer matches. Before the game starts, you can decide how you want the cleared rows to appear. You can choose between the rows appearing at the bottom or having them show up in the same position they were cleared from.
Okay, I'm not being completely truthful here, there is one major feature added to this version of Tetris that really shakes things up, and that's power-up items that are earned by destroying blocks with items in them and can perform quite a wide range of interesting feats. These pick ups can do everything from destroying a number of lines at the bottom of the grid to shifting columns left or right, or even freezing time for various opponents or hiding your opponents' Next and Hold areas so they aren't sure what is coming next. Other pick up items keep your opponents from rotating their blocks or can cause your own board to collapse some in order to fill in some holes you might have on the grid. I find this power-up addition interesting. While the rest of the game keeps itself as close to the original game as possible, this one added feature really does a lot to enhance the overall feel of the game to make it appealing to more than just retro-gamers wanting another way to play the classic puzzle game.
