Zen gives you an “endless experience” where pieces keep dropping forever and encouraging messages flash on the screen. Of the variations on offer, Zen and Poker are the most interesting. Much more often than say in, Columns, where sheer chance can make you look good with alarming regularity.īesides the standard Bejeweled strain, PopCap have furnished four new modes of play, to go along with some mainstays. And hell, sometimes, you might just deserve to feel that way. Throw in both purposeful and accidental cascading and special-gem making explosive screen clears, and you’ll often feel like quite the puzzle game guru. There’s a definite sense of achievement making matches, and further, making early matches to effect change needed to create more important matches later on.
Bejeweled 3 xbox 360 Pc#
The formula is admittedly very addictive – fans would say, as addictive as it ever was on your PC or on your phone – but now it’s in high definition, so it’s also looks better than it ever did. The earning and prudent usage of special gems then, are the key to Bejeweled mastery.
Fours and fives, and T’s, L’s and +’s, not only take more gems off the screen and earn more points, but they unlock special gems, like the Star gem (which clears everything in its vertical and horizontal path when matched). Of course, deeper into the game, you’ll find that you’ve got to do more than make rudimentary matches of three to stay alive. Initially, beating levels is easy – the experience isn’t timed and it will seem as if any allowable swaps will serve your purpose. Should the new pieces run out before the bar is full, your game is over. Creating matches fills a bar at the bottom, and once it’s maxed out, you’ve beaten the level. These cascades are the Bejeweled gamer’s dream come true. In fortuitous circumstances, the new gems which descend from heaven to take the place of their fallen comrades, drop in such a way as to create further matches.
Matches clear gems and clear the way for new pieces to fall. The central idea remains the same: swap adjacent coloured gems to create vertical or horizontal rows of at least three in a tight 8 x 8 well.
The results aren’t spectacular, as they were with EA’s exquisitely refined Tetris, but it’s about as good a job as can be expected. Fortunately, they’ve done both fairly well here. All PopCap could do to evolve the experience was to polish the presentation, and tack on enough variations of the main game to entice us to dive in. For all the differently-themed Monopoly packages out there, we’re still playing Monopoly. That’s all the endorsement you should need.Īnd for the rest of us, who need some background and some convincing, to wit: puzzle games are like board games – there’s only so much you can do while spawning new releases. This second official sequel does its Bejeweled thing better, and looks better doing it, than any release the franchise has seen so far. If not – if you have an unhealthy passion for all things Bejeweled, then by all means, skip this review and get the game now. If I sound like you, you’d do well to read on. If I’m being honest, what came to me were faint memories of just another puzzle game involving matching coloured gems (wait, this isn’t Columns?) – and here I was, many years later revisiting essentially a souped up retread of that original comfortable, but unremarkable, experience. I won’t say that playing this Xbox Live version overcame me with joyous nostalgia. Prior to my sit down with Bejeweled 3, I’d only ever dabbled in this series, passing some time with one of the earlier iterations on my PC (for free, as I recall). The results aren’t spectacular, as they were with EA’s exquisitely refined Tetris, but it’s about as good a job as can be expected."
The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the game include in-game achievements and trophies to earn, eight mini-games, online leaderboards for six game types, and high-resolution graphics." All PopCap could do to evolve the experience was to polish the presentation, and tack on enough variations of the main game to entice us to dive in. Classic mode is the traditional game of Bejeweled with some new gems to encounter. Quest mode, for example, has you completing 40 consecutive puzzles, while lightning mode has you racing against time to clear as many gems as possible.įor those that want to just kick back and play without any restrictions, Zen mode will offer a relaxing respite with calming sounds, music, and backgrounds. Choose from eight game types designed to test your gem-matching abilities in various ways.
Bejeweled 3 xbox 360 series#
This third entry in PopCap's pervasive puzzle series returns to the same match-three mechanic that made the first two games the top-selling titles on the computer platform.