One of several niche nuzzled documentaries to arrive within a very short period of time. Like The King of Kong, Ecstasy of Order dedicates itself to one of the more intensely-competitive corners of the video game world, albeit one without as natural a polarizing figure as Kong's infamous villain, Billy Mitchell. Without exception, each of the Tetris mega-minds featured in this spotlight comes off as refreshingly earnest, friendly and down-to-Earth. These are guys I wouldn't mind sharing a few beers with over a sticky NES control pad, and it's tough not to sit back, smile, and revel in the moment when they all get together for the very first time, several world records change hands and a spontaneous game of Texas Hold 'Em breaks out. In some ways, I think that's a symptom of the broadly different approaches of the two games: where Donkey Kong is about fire, death and imposition, Tetris is more in line with a timed jigsaw puzzle. It's quiet, inwardly-focused and nuanced, and thus so are its greatest players. Depending on the viewer's mentality, their enjoyment of the two films may vary appropriately. Sprinkled with a set of widely-varied contenders, more than its share of mysterious intrigue and the pointed quest to crown the world's best player in a first-ever champion's tournament, this is a startlingly arresting subject and a dense display of cerebral gamesmanship. Well worth watching.

**Pros:** The real highlight of Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters is that it serves as a time capsule of the skill level of Tetris players in 2010 when the documentary was recorded. You can see how far skill levels have coming in world record progression videos, but a time capsule of a point in time, gives those future accomplishments much more weight, rather than if it was all in retrospect. For example, I thought the tournament in the documentary was setup solely for its sake, but it turns out that it was actually the inaugural Classic Tetris World Championship, which is a tournament that has been held annually ever since. In the documentary [spoiler]level 30[/spoiler] was presented as a monumental achievement, however, since then the kill screen has been defeated and the world record has been pushed to a staggering 347. In the documentary the top players are the ones who maxed-out the game's score, but since then an uncap code was created and the score was pushed all the way from 999 thousand to 29.4 million. I would highly recommend anyone who enjoyed the documentary to watch Summoning Salt's video on the world record history of Tetris as it's a wonderful companion piece, which provides the insight required to appreciate how far the game has come. **Neutral:** Ecstasy of Order did get me invested in Tetris being played professionally. I'm someone who already watches videos on world record histories for games, but the documentary still made it clear and easy to understand. It introduced the top players and what their accomplishments were as well as the current standings of the game's records. The documentary then setup its main goal, which was the tournament to crown the best Tetris player in the world. Before that, it delved into the history of professional Tetris with the Nintendo 1990 World Championships and the backgrounds of all the competition's participants to really heighten the stakes of the tournament. The tournament itself was exciting as we finally see extend footage of Tetris masters going head to head with each other. Throughout the movie, there's kill screen at level 29 is brought multiple times and rightly so, since it is functionally the end of the game. Alongside it is brought up [spoiler]the mythical level 30, which one of the participants Thor Aackerlund claimed to have reached before, but for which video evidence didn't exist.[/spoiler] What I wasn't expecting was [spoiler]that this was actually a setup to have him reach it at the very end of the documentary, which neatly tied up that lingering plot point.[/spoiler] **Cons:** Ecstasy of Order was a little dry in the middle, when it was going over the background of all the participants. It dragged for a little too long and could've been shortened a bit to keep the interest high throughout.