I also love how the gems explode, blast down an tunnel, and then reassemble after each stage - it all looks great. The background art is lush and lovely, and there are some subtle animations there to entertain you. Chain reactions are a treat for the eyes. When gems give way to their advanced form, like the exploding Flame, Star, and Supernova gems, the effects are dazzling.

The visuals have received a nice upgrade, with support for up to 1920 x 2000 resolution in Ultra Mode. Again, this is a huge game.Īll of these modes look and sound great in Bejeweled 3. On top of this, the game has 65 achievement badges spread across all of the modes. PopCap says that there’s 131 of these ranks, so you can play this game for a very long time without running out of challenge. You start out as a scrub, but you’ll work your way up through the levels as you progress. In all of these modes, the game is always tracking your score and performance. This is still a great game for people who enjoy this genre, and due to how quickly players will grasp the core concepts, and how easy it is to pick up and put down, it will cater to a wider audience, but for $20, there are other games out there with more to offer in the way of substance and replayabilty. Despite the creativity found within, this title won’t be for everyone and I can’t say that I’d be willing to spend as much as they’re asking for it on myself, especially not when I can pay a dollar on my phone for a similar style of game. To sum up, Bejeweled is a good way to kill a little bit of time, and PopCap has done a good job with adding variety to the game types, but it is still a shallow title that doesn’t require a lot of time, energy or commitment, and something that could get tired very quickly. If you can’t get enough Bejeweled and know you won’t get bored easily playing this, $20 is not asking too much, but for anyone who is looking for more substance from their game, the price point is far too high. When the superficial variety of the different game types is stripped away, you will still be left with Bejeweled, which might not be a bad thing if you enjoy connect-three games, but when the entire game is really just different variants of the same task over and over again, the chance of growing bored with the entire thing quickly is relativity high.

The fact that the only handheld system this is offered on is the DS means that anyone who wants to play it and doesn’t have a DS will have to buy it on the consoles, PC, or Mac. For me, this style of game is something I would maybe pay a dollar for on my phone to kill time waiting for something else. As much fun as this game is (for what it is), I have a hard time finding any justification outside of gift-giving for spending $20 on this. The downside to this is that no matter how you look at it, this is still Bejeweled - which is a good thing, if you enjoy connect-three games - but the entire thing is pretty basic without much serious game variety. In the stats section, players can check their rank - which goes up as you play - along with number of gems matched, favorite gem color, and total time played, among other things. Along with badges there high scores and stats for each game type. Fulfilling certain requirements will unlock a badge at the bronze stage, and continuing to meet increasingly difficult requirements will unlock silver and gold versions of the badges. There are also badges, which are basically Achievements or Trophies with a different name. Clearing four gems at once provides a flame gem that explodes all the gems around it when cleared, while clearing gems in a T or L shape creates a star gem that clears all the gems in a cross, with the star gem at its center. When more than three gems are cleared, special ones are provided. Each game type will get more challenging as you play longer (for example, in Ice Storm, once you’ve cleared so many, each column breaks up so that each row becomes its own column) but there are ways to make it less difficult.

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