POSTED 4/3/11


BEJEWELED BLITZ LIVE

Popcap
Xbox 360/XBLA (also on PC)

RARGH! Babble. GRRRRARRRB! Bibble. FNERBBB! Bubble! AAANGHH! Bobble! POYIP! Dragon. WAUGHHH! Cricket reference. Jebus, this thing’s reduced us to a gibbering mess.

Yes, stress has a new name, and it’s Bejeweled Blitz. Forget veneers of calming, soothing, hippie-trippy zenacity like regular incarnations of Bejeweled deliver, this fucker’s for the ‘meh’ generation. No time? Fnuh, 60 seconds and you’re done. Out of there, off to preen your fauxhawk and fidget with the digit dots on your iThingummy.

For you, over there – yes you, don’t look bashful now - the one person who has NFI what Bejeweled is, it’s a puzzle game where you match three or more same-coloured gems in vertical or horizontal lines, at which point they go kablooey and the holes left are filled with an endless stream of more coloured jewels sent from wherever above. The better the matches and bigger the kaboominations, the more score you amass. Simple pimple!

Usually there’s time to ponder, drink in the ambience and even breathe, but not here – as you may have gathered from our over-the-top blahedy-blah up to this point. But it’s not exaggerated. 60 seconds is fleeting, so pressure’s on from the get-go. Then the 30 second warning comes and before you know it hippie-nag voiceover chick’s reading the name of the best Midnight Oil album at you. It’s so high-pressure that we reckon the Dalai Lama would lose his shit playing this.

Two flavours of Bejeweled are included – the classic move-a-gem-one-spot thing as well as ‘Twist’, where you go all rotational on the arses of four gem cubular groups. Solo players are catered for, but the real aim here’s sociability – even if fleeting. Mind you, stopping at one game isn’t easy – unless you suffer an aortal ventricular meltdown, which is entirely possible. Blerpflizzle.

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