One of my favorite casual games is Bejeweled–in fact, I make sure to play the Facebook version every day–so when I was asked to take part in the beta for Bejeweled 3, I jumped at the opportunity, as some of the new modes I had read about intrigued me.
Since there’s no story mode to speak of, I’ll just talk about the different modes and what I thought. There are still spoilers ahead, so if you want to be surprised, click away now.
Bejeweled 3
Developer: PopCap Games
Platform: PC (reviewed)
Still with me? Let’s dig into the gems of the game:
Bejeweled 3 has an immense number of modes to play, some old, some revamped, and some brand new. There’s the classic game we all know and love, a revamped Zen mode that allows you to customize your relaxing game with nature sounds, encouraging messages, and binaural tones (which only gave me a headache instead of making me relax), to name a few things. Lightning mode is a slightly tweaked variant of the Facebook app, with you picking up time gems to extend the one minute time limit for as long as you can. Quest mode has you playing a collection of minigames to restore the artifacts of the Bejeweled world. This mode I felt was a bit of missed potential–the mini games repeat themselves after a while, and I wish there could’ve been more variety in this mode rather than just playing the same games again and again. Three of these are their own seperate modes: Butterflies, Ice Storm, and Poker.
In Butterflies mode, your job is to release “butterflies” made of gems before they reach the spider at the top of the board. While it sounds simple, it can get rather challenging quickly. Ice Storm is similar, you’re trying to stop ice from reaching the top of the board by making matches, and like Butterflies, it sounds simple but can get challenging very quickly–sometimes a little TOO challenging. In Poker, you make matches to earn cards to build poker hands (so matching 3 sets of blue diamonds would give you three of a kind, for example). While interesting, the payouts are rather low, which proved to be challenging in the Quest mode.
The mode I spent the most time in was the Diamond Mine mini-game, in which you remove gems to excavate treasure–you’ll be at this for hours trying to see just how far down you can get. (my record is 250, and I’m still trying to get 100%)
Overall, there is plenty to do here, and certainly lives up to the Bejeweled name.
Story: N/A
Graphics: 5/5 (Excellent)
Graphics are clean and vibrant, with every explosion, flash, and sparkle rendered beautifully and with no lag–especially if you’re playing on a high definition screen.
Sound/Music: 5/5 (Excellent)
Bejeweled ambient and calming soundtrack is the perfect compliment to gem matching, and isn’t overly annoying or distracting (although the option to turn it off is there, should you desire to match gems in blessed silence)
Gameplay 4/5 (Very Good)
The only thing keeping this from being Excellent is the lack of variety in the Quest mode and the learning curve some modes have–but issues aside, there is a lot to do and plenty to discover as you play.
The Final Word
Overall, another solid entry in the series that reaffirms why Bejeweled is the most played game in the world, and will no doubt bring many more dedicated players into its fold–now for one more round of Diamond Mine…
– MonsterVine Rating: 4 out of 5 – Good
