On the surface, Tetris Worlds seems like a great idea: six different forms of Tetris in a single package. Regular Tetris is the most well known puzzle game ever made. Square Tetris is the gameplay from The New Tetris. Cascade Tetris allows tetrominos to fall down into gaps after lines have been cleared. Sticky Tetris has special tetrominos in multiple parts, which can individually fall down into gaps. Hotline Tetris has you focusing on clearing specific rows. Finally, Fusion Tetris has you trying to connect atom blocks to the fusion block in the bottom corner. What could go wrong?
Tetris World starts off with a rather overproduced FMV cutscene. The square residents of Minos have to power portals to escape their planet before a supernova, which naturally involves playing different forms of Tetris. The backgrounds are all various planets, but are all rather bland. The story mode being the main focus also means that each form of Tetris has a definitive end of reaching a certain rank. You gain ranks by gaining enough lines within a 2 minute interval, with your score reset when the timer runs out.
If this was just for the story mode, then it would be fine, but the same applies to the arcade mode (which does allow multiple people to play their own game of Tetris, using different modes if they choose). This essentially means that there’s no marathon mode and no high score or leaderboards outside of the two minute limit. Which seems like a pretty major thing to not include in a Tetris game.