Bejeweled 3's cautious, but it isn't a lazy update by any means: it's much more inventive than you might have suspected. PopCap's latest keeps the central game the same as it ever was, and it's as terrifyingly effective as usual.īut built around that time-honoured jewel-matching mechanic is a web of bright new ideas, spun off into a range of chunky additional modes. Twist messed with the basics too much for the series' core audience so Bejeweled 3 represents something of a regrouping – albeit an elegant one.
For this team, however, used to selling bucketloads of games every few seconds, it seems to have been a mild disappointment. By anyone else's standards, the sales of the polished and rather clever Twist would probably have led to champagne celebrations amongst the cubicles. PopCap's tried tinkering with the magical formula before and been gently slapped around for it.
And it would be easy to ignore the fact that the series' latest instalment offers a quiet range of clever variations that bring new life to the game.īuilding on Bejeweled is not an easy gig. Because of all that, it's easy to underplay how well it's put together.
The game is currently available from the PopCap website for the PC and Mac OSX platforms, at just $19.95, and if you buy it, a free copy will be donated to the Child's Play charity foundation.Offering criticism of a Bejeweled game is a bit like a medieval peasant giving you his opinions on the Bubonic plague PopCap's match-three classic is ready to chew through human society regardless of what people have to say about it.īejeweled's a force of nature. Sadly, online features like leaderboards aren't present in Bejeweled 3, but it's probably among the few drawbacks of this title.īy keeping its traditional roots, adding lots of new features, challenges and achievements, Bejeweled 3 is our Best Downloadable Game of the Year. What's more, an in-game achievement system was also added to make players aim for certain tasks in order to boast their accomplishments to their friends. These range from matching a certain number of jewels in as few moves as possible, getting a high enough score in poker or finding artifacts as fast as possible, and, by the end of it, can become almost inhumane in terms of difficulty. Playing all these modes without a certain goal can get boring though, but the company introduced a Challenge mode, where you go through each mode and need to fulfill certain requirements in order to proceed. While the core jewel-matching mechanics are still there, Bejeweled 3 really adds in some great ideas, from playing poker with the jewels, to preventing avalanches, uncovering artifacts in the sand or diffusing bombs by blowing them up before they explode (logic doesn't play a big role here).īesides these new ideas, PopCap still kept the traditional classic mode, as well as a pretty interesting Zen one, which aims at calming you down after other, more intense modes, through a variety of options, including displaying positive statements, showing you when to breathe or playing soothing music. This year, the company reached into its franchise hall of fame and delivered Bejeweled 3, a full-pledged sequel after releasing two spin-off titles, Bejeweled: Twist and Blitz. Zombies, Zuma or Peggle into the hands of the masses.
Downloadable games are becoming more and more important these days for regular users, not just casual ones, and this is largely due to PopCap Games, the company that brought titles like Plants vs.