Tetris Effect review – makes your skin tingle and your mind hum

PC, PlayStation 4; Monstars/Resonair/Enhance
This euphoric puzzle game pleasurably hijacks your neural pathways (and your emotions)

There's a phenomenon in video games that people call "the zone": a state of mind-body oneness where your reflexes and senses feel that they are operating without conscious input. The zone isn't the territory of blockbuster shooters or narrative adventures: it is the domain of puzzle and rhythm games, arcade shmups, games about patterns and reflexes. These are games that temporarily and pleasurably hijack your neural pathways.

Enter Tetris Effect, fittingly named for the hypnagogic hallucinations experienced by people who've spent so much time stacking blocks that they visualise falling tetrominos whilst falling asleep, or idly imagine arranging furniture into neat lines. First released last year on PlayStation 4 and newly available on PC, it is a sumptuous, mind-altering, humanist interpretation of the classic Soviet puzzle game. It combines the simple, pleasing act of fitting shapes together until they disappear with intense visual backdrops and dynamic music that shifts and bends around your play. If you have the equipment, it does all of this in sensorily immersive virtual reality.