POSTED 27/12/10


BEJEWELED 3

Popcap
PC

Yay! We’ve finally escaped its clutches. Right, quickly fire off a review and jet over to Mum’s for Chrissie roast dinner – yum! Hang on, December 27?! Damn you Popcap, you’ve done it again!

OK, we’re dramatising just a teensy lot, but anybody who’s been drawn in by the superglue-like, time melting tractor beam of Bejeweled will know what we’re on about.

Bejeweled 3 is another match three (or more) in a row of the same coloured jewels game, like Columns on the Megadrive, which predated the original Bejeweled by a good decade – despite Popcap claiming credit for pioneering the genre. Still, theirs is the most popular according to Mr Guinness (the book bloke, not the black ale with a thick creamy head bloke).

Various remixes are new. ‘Poker’ is ace, whereby you assemble poker hands of jewel matches. ‘Ice Storm’ is a stressful beat-the-bomb kinda thing, ‘Diamond Mine’ has you exploding clods of earth for gemmy survival and ‘Butterflies’, the most freakout-inducing, has you trying to ‘catch’ coloured flutterbys before they reach the top and get spider-munched.

But wait, there’s more! You also get ‘Zen’, which is a chilled, do it in your own time thing, ‘Quest’ (work it out!) and ‘Lightning’, the funnerest stressy mode.

One dopey fault remains in the ‘Classic’ mode though – progression is totally random, as you can run out of possible moves. ‘Zen’ proves it can be endless, so we’re stuffed if we know why Popcap left things broken. Still, at least the addition of trophy badges (which we need, steenkin’ or no) helps alleviate the pain a smidge.

Regardless, Bejeweled 3 – familiar with a whiff of new - is the cream of this style of puzzler. Which reminds us, Popcap owes us Chrissie pudding!

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