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pjsim2001 · 2 years

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Bejeweled 2 Review - Match 3 Finds Its Footing

Summary ★★★★ Essential

Bejeweled 2 makes improvements on the addictive match 3 formula its predecessor popularized, while ramping things up with a gorgeous presentation and a hypnotizing soundtrack that's debatably one of the greatest in video game history. Its new modes will delight casual players whether they're looking for relaxation or action, while still providing some ridiculous secrets for hardcore players to rage over and grind to achieve.

For more game reviews, check out https://pjsim2001.tumblr.com/reviews.

Background

Bejeweled 2 was my first Bejeweled game - I actually downloaded the WiiWare version initially since I was trying to get as much as I could out of my Wii at the time, but to make a long story short, don't play that version, it SUCKS. Just get the PC one.

I already got into my thoughts on Bejeweled in general back in my review of the first game, so I want to get things started right away. This sequel came out three years after the first game, so what had PopCap been able to do in that time?

Presentation

...well to start, they made the game a whole lot sexier. Now the game runs in a higher resolution of 1024x768. Gone is the flash game sidebar and crusty lookin' gem and menu graphics, now we have a cool 3D look, with crystal-like purple balls for menu buttons and awesome planetary backgrounds.

The game takes on the theme of traveling across different planets in the galaxy. When you beat a level, you travel through a wormhole which sucks in the UI elements and camera, then spits them back out at the end with a different background and new gem layout. There's a lot more effects and effort put into the graphics this time around, probably because this game was actually made for PC unlike the first one.

Something you'll notice is the lighting. While the first game lit up the gem you had your mouse over, that's nothing compared to how it's handled in this game. All the gems shimmer on their own, but on mouseover, they'll shine even brighter, and the light will seemingly bounce off the neighboring gems. When you've created one of the new special gems this game has to offer, the entire area will be noticeably brighter from the glow. Everything feels so much more lively.

There's even a bunch of secret visual changes you can activate by typing in certain things. For instance, you can get rid of the UI elements by typing "noframe", change the background to an animated Matrix-lookin' one by typing "network", change the background to a classic animated starfield by typing "starfield", or even change all the graphics of the gems to the ones from Diamond Mine (a precursor to Bejeweled 1) by typing in "oldskool".

Gameplay

If you've somehow forgotten, match 3 works by matching three or more gems of the same type together to get rid of them from the board. But Bejeweled 2 expands upon this by having certain combinations not only get rid of the gems, but create special ones as well! Woah!

Two special gems have been added to all modes of the game:

A Power Gem is created by either matching four gems in a row, or matching gems in an L shape. The gem will be the same type as the ones you just matched. Match it with the same type, and it'll explode, destroying anything surrounding it.

A Hyper Cube is created by matching five gems in a row. Once created, you can switch it with any other gem, which will cause every single gem of that type on the board to be destroyed. It's extremely useful for when you run out of moves, but be careful though, since if it gets blown up by a Power Gem, it'll be destroyed without doing anything! This would later be changed down the road, but there's some merit to the challenge of having to be more careful when trying to save Hyper Cubes for later.

These gems feel like a natural evolution, and they work great. They give you a goal to achieve, forcing you to play better so you can get the opportunity to make larger matches, creating the cool items with their crisp explosion effects and cool electric shocks. They can also help shuffle the board a bit, making them potential lifesavers.

Game Modes

B2 has the two modes from the first game, Classic and Action (renamed from Time Trial). There's nothing really new to say about these modes aside from the new gems I described above - Classic still has you matching gems with no time limit until you run out of moves, while Action has you matching gems to fill the score meter before it depletes over time. But there's also two new modes to try out:

Puzzle mode gives you a bunch of different boards to clear. The idea is that you travel from planet to planet - each with a set of puzzles that employ some sort of theme or difficulty level - and try to clear all the gems from the board. There's actually another two new gems for this mode - Bomb Gems, which explode like Power Gems after a set amount of moves, and Rock Gems, which can't be matched and must be destroyed with either a Power Gem or a Hyper Cube. It can get pretty difficult, and you'll find yourself hitting the hint button after every move, since it'll tell you whether the puzzle is still solvable or not, and if you want, what the next move to make is. So you can easily cheese your way through everything, if you'd like - there's only one puzzle near the end that doesn't allow hints, but it's not too difficult. I'm glad the game gives you the unlimited hints, but I just wish there was an option to have it tell you if the puzzle becomes unsolvable without having to move your mouse to hit the hint button all the time. All-in-all, I'd recommend this mode as one to pay attention to if you want to get better at the game, since it gets you used to moving the jewels around and making plays.

Endless mode, on the other hand, is completely chill. All you do is match the gems - you can't run out of moves. This is a simple but honestly genius mode, and when I think about it, there doesn't really exist anything like it nowadays. It might sound boring, but it's really not. It's fun to see how far you can get, and you even get to build up a little jewelry collection with each level you clear. There was also a study talking about how playing games like Bejeweled can decrease stress and increase mood, so that's pretty cool - it's nice to just chill and match some gems, looking at all the pretty colors and listening to the good soundtrack.

Soundtrack

Oh yeah, the soundtrack! There is absolutely no way I can talk about Bejeweled 2 without mentioning it's incredible soundtrack. Remember in my first review, when I mentioned how we'd be seeing more of Peter Hajba/Skaven? Well this, in my opinion, is his magnum opus. The game is worth playing for the music alone. I actually think the mixing sounds a bit better in the game version than the album linked above; the album makes some of the instruments too loud over the others. Either way, still some great compositions.

I don't even know where to start. Basically, aside from the loading screen, title screen, and credits, the game's soundtrack is one continuous song (although in the remastered OST link above, it's separated into parts), and oh man, it takes you on a journey, complete with its own highs and lows. Some of the synths just have the sound of jewels, twinkling as you travel across the galaxy. You've got tracks that are videogamey and catchy, you've got your slower pieces, you've got your optimistic beats, your introspective moments, mysterious secrets... basically everything.

My favorite tracks are... I'm not telling you. Play the game and experience it yourself.

The ONLY song in the soundtrack I think is a little weak is the loading screen, Autonomous V2... at least, the very first half of it. It's a remix of the loading screen from the first game, but I think the first part doesn't sound as good. There's this annoying, offbeat beeping sound that plays throughout it - and while this sound did exist in the first game, the song was more bleep-bloopy there, so you didn't really notice it, and even if you did, it added to the whole internety vibe. The song in general is also more intense and emotional in the first one, although the second half of this song definitely gets the goosebumps going with the twinkly synths, so again, it's not outright bad.

Also, while we're on the topic of sounds - they're good in this game. Mostly the same, but with higher resolution and a few newcomers, so nothing to report. The low-resolution announcer guy from the first game has been replaced by deep voice dude, who's really pleasing to listen to.

THE NEGATIVES OF THIS GAME

"Wait a minute, there's NEGATIVES of this game? But didn't you give it a 4/4 in the summary?"

Yes, but that's only because I think the soundtrack and presentation combined with the generally addicting gameplay and varied modes are so insanely good on the surface that everyone should at least TRY the game out. But that doesn't mean that aside from that, there aren't some things that piss me off. Besides, if you love something and spend more time with it, you'll start to notice the things wrong with it.

Now, full disclosure - most of this stuff won't affect casual players. They probably won't care. They'll just play the game for fun and whatever. But as someone who's somewhat of a Bejeweled pro, playing and reviewing every single game and nitpicking the details, there's two things I need to mention:

Action Mode's Music and Gem Shuffling (or Lack Thereof)

So, just to remind you, in Action mode, you need to keep your eyes darting around the board to find matches to make as quickly as possible.

Humor me for a bit - listen to a some of the song that plays in Time Trial in Bejeweled 1 (also check out the part at 2:31, lol, love that part). As I mentioned in that review, it's a perfect choice - high energy, action packed, gets you groovin'. And here's a fun fact - PopCap didn't actually make any of the music in B1 FOR the game, they just asked to use songs that already existed.

So now that B2 is out, and has a soundtrack tailor made for it by the same guy, which has references to the music in the first game, you'd bet that the song for Action mode is gonna be even better! I mean the rest of the soundtrack is great, right? Well guess what. Action mode no longer has its own music. Instead, they just skip to a specific point in the main music suite. Want to hear it? Scroll up to the music player, and go to track 11 (or 10 if you want the intro). That's where the music starts in Action mode.

The music suite in B2 is one of the major things I like about this game, and I wouldn't have it any other way - it's relaxing and beautiful. But that comes at the cost of a lethargic Action mode. It gets even worse when you realize that the song IMMEDIATELY AFTERWARDS is "Schein", one of the SLOW JAMS!!!!! It might seem like a nitpick, but music is important and sets the tone. When Schein is sending me into a lullaby, I can't focus as well on quickly finding matches.

Another issue related to Action mode is that, unlike in the first game, the board won't shuffle once you run out of moves - instead, it uses whatever algorithm Endless is using so you can't run out of moves. This might seem like a positive and an improvement on paper, but in practice, it actually ends up making the game way harder.

If you were about to run out of moves in B1, you would make the last move (or find it with the hint button), then the board would reshuffle to give you a BUNCH of matches, keeping the pace going. But in B2, if the board gets bricked, the game will just drop in gems to make matches in one little corner, which is BORING and not usually enough to recover whatever time you've lost.

Even worse is once you get the gems in that little spot shuffled enough, the game will just say "alright bye bye" and make you go search for whatever little spot your shuffling made, which can either cause the cycle to repeat, or have you waste time by second guessing yourself, looking around the board, trying to figure out if you just missed some oblique match in a corner somewhere.

It doesn't ruin the mode by any means, it can still be fun, but these bits certainly cause a bit of frustration.

Bats**t Insane Unlockables

Here's the big daddy of the problems with B2 - in fact, this part is so crazy, it literally delayed this review by a week as I judged whether or not it'd warrant a drop to a 3/4.

Basically, when I went over the new game modes, I actually lied - there's more than just Puzzle and Endless! I think these modes are what makes the game Bejeweled 2 Deluxe, since the Wii version of the game - which doesn't have these unlockable modes - drops the Deluxe moniker. So, if you're buying the deluxe version of the game, and the deluxe version gives you these game modes, then, wouldn't you agree with me that it's pretty important to be able to, ya know...

ACTUALLY UNLOCK THE GAME MODES?!?!!?!?!?!?

The requirements to unlock these modes are so incredibly ridiculous, especially one in particular, that I legitimately believe that the amount of people in the entire world who've spent the time to unlock them is probably under 1,000. I'll go over them, from least ridiculous to most ridiculous.

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Original

Original is more-so a secret than an unlockable. Just move your mouse clockwise 8 times around the four main game modes on the main menu, and you'll be sent straight into a game. It's just B2 but without the new gems, making it the same as B1. Next.

Cognito

Cognito is pretty standard to get - all you have to do is finish every single puzzle in Puzzle mode (including the optional ones). The mode uses the same layouts as Puzzle mode, except you automatically travel through each planet in order, completing the first four boards of each. But what makes this interesting is that it runs off of score like the other modes - if you use a hint, you won't get any points for that board, so you're incentivized to complete the boards without using any. I actually really love this idea, and from what I played, it was super satisfying to use the skills I've gained to reapproach these puzzles without offloading brain power to the hints - it gives you a reason to not just cheat your way through them, and take the time to get a satisfying victory.

Twilight

To unlock Twilight, you need to reach level 18 in Classic. If you've been reading these reviews without having played the game, you don't understand how difficult this is. As I explained in the B1 review, the game is a lot like Tetris in terms of luck - yes there are things you can do to increase your chances, but in general, the game can easily screw you over by not giving you what you need. You can get blindsided and run out of moves in level 4, so to make it all the way to level 18 (with the level clear requirements increasing each time, by the way) without getting screwed over even ONCE is a herculean task that could easily burn hours.

But honestly, it's kinda worth it. Twilight mode is simple, but cool - basically, the game runs in slowmo with a darker background and lower pitch sound effects. But the real change is that every single time you make a match, the gravity flips. So the first match you make will have the gems fall down as usual, but then the next match will have the gems fall up, with new gems coming from the bottom. It's a simple change, but one that makes the game both harder and easier. Easier since you can unbrick the board and make special gems easier (I got two Hyper Cubes on one board my first time playing it), but harder since thinking ahead is REALLY difficult, and before you know it, you might end up without any more moves. It's the right mix of challenging and fun.

Hyper

To unlock Hyper mode, you need to reach level 9 in Action. Yes, it's only half of what you need in Classic - but even if you haven't played the game, you can tell that this gonna be more difficult. At least Classic allows you to spend as much time as you want planning out your moves, but Action straight up requires you to get good. For a while, I could barely reach level 5 much less 9. The timer drops like a damn cinder block in the later levels if you aren't making matches, to the point where waiting around for 2 seconds feels like losing the points gained by 10 matches. Even with my friends helping me on a screenshare, I just consistently got screwed over by level 6. It takes the perfect storm of luck and raw skill to get far enough (or if you need some extra help, I'll explain an option later on ;))

Hyper mode is a bit lamer than Twilight, but still fun. It's the same as Action mode, expect now it runs at like 2 or maybe 3 times speed. Gems drop super quickly, so there's no time to waste. I was surprised by how well I was able to survive though - it makes you realize a lot of time spent in Action mode is waiting around for gems to drop and reveal the moves, so having it happen in an instant and just flying through the levels was pretty satisfying.

Finity

OK, what the hell were the developers over at PopCap smoking when making this game? Can I have some? To unlock this mode, you have to reach level 280 in Endless mode.

TWO. HUNDRED. AND EIGHTY.

Every time you beat a level in Endless mode, the point requirement increases, just like in Classic or Action. I have video - it took me about 10 minutes to complete level 41. 280 levels - 41 levels = 239 levels * 10mins = 2930 mins = 48.33 hours. And guess what? THIS CALCULATION DOESN'T FACTOR IN THE REQUIREMENT INCREASING OR THE TIME I SPENT BEFORE THIS! 48 hours straight at a minimum. Dude. And one guy in the comments of a video showing gameplay of this mode said it took him 3 months, another person an entire year.

The mode seems interesting though. I say "seems" because I haven't been able to unlock it in the... like... month I've been playing. It's Action mode, except you don't get points by matching gems - instead, you need to get them by detonating Power Gems and Hyper Cubes. To spice things up even more, the bombs and rocks from Puzzle mode drop in too. Sounds cool - I could imagine the bombs help you move things around, while the rocks provide an obstacle. But is it worth the amount of time you'd have to spend to unlock it? I don't think so. At that point, you'd probably be sick and tired of the game.

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You know what the funny part of all this is? The console versions of the game actually CHANGED these requirements to be MUCH easier - Twilight & Hyper now only need lv 6, and Finity is lv 11 (LOL) - so obviously, SOMEBODY down the pipeline looked at this and went "nah bro", so why was it like this in the first place? It just seems kinda random.

Here's the thing though - should you get pissed over not being able to unlock these modes? Maybe. But I don't think it ruins the game. I consider these modes as little extras for people who are REALLY into the game - I think most regular people are perfectly fine with the standard four modes that are in the game, and it's not like there were two separate releases of the game on PC, one having the modes and one not, and one being cheaper than the other. And hey, maybe somebody could even stumble upon these modes without knowing they exist. Maybe they like to have Endless on in the background while they watch videos, or maybe they're just having a really good day on Action. Trying to strive for the modes can be frustrating, but when you do unlock them, it feels super good. I have my save data with Classic on level 18 and Action on level 9, and I'm very proud of it.

Here's a neat little trick I used to help me get the modes - if you go to "C:\ProgramData\PopCap Games\Bejeweled2" on your PC, you can find the save data under the "users" folder. Every time you reach a new level in Classic or Action, back out of the mode, then copy and paste the folder (or maybe one of the files inside that saves the data for the mode, idk). That way you have a little save to restore and fall back on in case you lose. But the funny thing is, I actually only needed to use it once in Classic mode - I still made the backups on Action, but I got super lucky and didn't die a single time. Also, I unlocked both Twilight and Hyper on the same day (just yesterday actually, with a draft of this review in progress). That was hilarious.

Verdict

Bejeweled 2 is a damn good game. Yeah, it has those little hiccups in design with the unlockables, and the Action mode could be a bit better, but literally everything else about the game is a 10/10. It's an upgrade in every way possible, for a game that was already incredibly addicting. If you're gonna play this: choose a time without distractions, get some headphones on, turn the volume up, and get ready to embark on a journey across the galaxy.

★★★★ Essential

Get the game from here: https://archive.org/details/bejeweled-2_202202, just download the ISO and install it.

(Yeah, I know I didn't link the web archive download for B1 as an attempt to be fair, but that was before I saw how poorly EA treated the series, so by all means, please download it from the web archive for free. You could buy the Steam version, but don't do that, since they basically just dumped it on there a long time ago with no effort. Don't support these fuckers. This game is basically if not literally abandonware.)

I think Bejeweled 2 can hold it's own against the sequels. While it might not have as much content as later entries (that's easily accessible at least), I think this version is the best experience of the series just because of its (inter)stellar music and presentation - once you get going, it really is magical.

I can barely remember the time before I had played any Bejeweled, back when I just knew it as "that casual game with the jewels". This game should be legendary. And it was - until it got buried underneath the sands of time. It just frustrates me that PopCap is owned by EA now, and that Bejeweled is totally dead. This series had so much personality and a truckload of awards and accolades behind it - this game (and its sequels) should be ported on every console like Tetris is, but it just isn't, and it'll never be, because Candy Crush totally demolished it. I was actually playing a little bit of web browser Bejeweled in a class once, and someone I was working with actually said "oh, is that Candy Crush? Or like, Gem Crush?".

But there's no reason to be down - there's still two more games left, and spoiler alert - they're both masterpieces as well. What a twist!

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pjsim2001 · 2 years

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Bejeweled Deluxe Review - The Birth of Match 3

Summary ★★★☆ Enjoyable

Bejeweled Deluxe is a legendary and well crafted game from back when puzzle games actually existed. Its simplicity and age could be a turn off for some, but others might find it refreshing and nostalgic. Either way, this is the game that started the match 3 genre, and it's an alright one to start with.

For more game reviews, check out https://pjsim2001.tumblr.com/reviews.

Background

For most of my life, I've played the same old games - platformers like Mario and Sonic, Wii stuff, and maybe a few FPS and miscellaneous party games. But recently I decided I wanted to branch out and try to add some new games to my repertoire, and maybe find something new to obsess over.

For some unexplained reason, Bejeweled popped up into my head. The game was something that I knew of... but had never played, or even really seen in action. It existed as a vague constant in the universe, but not one present in the gaming culture of today - I read an article somewhere calling Bejeweled "the Gone With the Wind of gaming", and I think that's an accurate description - TECHNICALLY massively popular and has iconic aspects, but not immediately memorable. Nowadays when people think of "match 3", they think of Candy Crush, the popularity of which and what it's done for the King company I can't even quantify.

Makes you wonder, whatever happened to PopCap, the company that made Bejeweled? They also made freaking PLANTS VS ZOMBIES (and Peggle as well, don't think I forgot about that) - you'd think that with a literal genre defining game like Bejeweled and one of the quintessential mobile games up there with Angry Birds like Plants vs Zombies, PopCap would be on par with King, having their games on the front page of the App Store... well, they got bought out by EA. Enough said.

So when looking for a Bejeweled game to play, I decided to skip anything modern and check out the past entries. I started with Bejeweled 2, and long story short, I'm now addicted to the entire series.

As of the writing of this review, I've played 1, 2, Twist, and 3, and I plan on making reviews for each one of them. Which is the best version? What does each version offer? Well, let's get started.

Graphics & Presentation

...OK, it's just the version I got, but the first thing I was jumpscared with when opening the game was this "Best Buy game center" window. I had no idea such a thing had ever existed. And look at that selection of ratchet ass flash games! Games like that are really nostalgic for a late 00s/early 10s Internet kid like me. But anyways, this popup is a bit annoying. The game is also installed in the start menu under "Best Buy Games" with a link to the website (which, by the way, now redirects to an Oakland Airport website?!?!?). If you're an epic hacker like me, you can get around the launcher by just changing the shortcut to open Bejeweled.exe instead of Launcher.hta, but yeah. At least the Best Buy ads haven't infiltrated the game, unlike back when Bejeweled was web only and was pimped out by Microsoft to advertisers.

That aside, here's the title screen of the actual game:

And what you see when you click there to play:

My friend described it best: "Cool Math Games?". You can definitely tell that this game originated as an online game, with the whole sidebar with small gameplay size, the onscreen logo, and the title screen with the "Click Here to Play!". Plus, when you get a high score, it'll tell you whether it was the best "for the day" which clears when you close the game (even if you come back the same day), which I bet is a holdover from online leaderboards. I also read that apparently the game didn't even HAVE a save feature until a later revision!

Needless to say, the game is dated, but in general, pretty nice. Unfortunately, the only resolution the game runs at is 640x480 - you can go fullscreen, but you can't stretch the window, which might be a visibility problem on high resolution displays. Good thing the gems are varied enough in shape and color to be distinguishable. There are also some charmingly classic effects, like rainbow text inbetween levels that warps and twists, as well as the gems swirling into the center of the screen when clearing a level or flying all over the place "exploding" when you lose. They also shimmer underneath your mouse cursor, and flip around in 3D when selected.

One weird quirk is that the high scores are hidden under the options menu. At first I couldn't find it, so I thought it meant that I'd have to complete a game every single time I wanted to see my scores! Also, the game shows the "swap these two gems!" tutorial every single time you open the program without a game in progress, which is a bit annoying, because you're forced to move that specific gem the game tells you to. Oh well.

Gameplay

Bejeweled introduced what's now referred to as match 3 gameplay - you start out with a board filled with gems, and you have to clear them by switching two adjacent gems to make rows or columns of 3 or more alike. If switching them won't cause a match, then the gems will return to their position and nothing will happen. But if you get a match, all the gems in the match will then disappear, causing the ones above them to fall down to fill the space, with more appearing from the top.

You'll get more points the longer your rows and columns are, or if switching two gems causes two different sets to be matched. The biggest way to earn points however is to "cascade", which is when making a match causes other gems to fall on top of each other to match and automatically clear themselves - the points will rack up the more cascades you make one after another.

The game has two modes: Normal and Time Trial.

Normal has you matching gems to reach a certain amount of points to clear the stage, represented by the bar at the bottom. There's no time limit, and the point requirement increases per level. What you'll need to be careful of though is running out of moves - you'll want to try and move the gems around in a way that'll maximize the amount of moves you can make, all the while trying to set up cascades and large matches. If you need help on finding a match to make, you can press the big bulbous purple button and it'll show you which gem to move, but at the cost of some points.

Time Trial uses the bottom bar as a timer instead. It starts out halfway full, then starts to tick down as time passes. You fill the timer by scoring points, so you'll need to make matches quickly and constantly to keep the bar from becoming empty. The bar moves faster and faster each level, so it'll reach a point where you'll need to make large matches and cascades to keep up. Luckily, you can't run out of moves in this mode - if you do, the gems will fall out and reshuffle themselves. You'll still want to try and be strategic with making moves though, since the less moves you have, the harder it'll be to find the next one, especially since you'll be rushing. Plus, the hint button basically becomes a suicide button past level 2, since it'll drop your timer.

You'll be surprised by how addicting Bejeweled is once you get to playing it. Just matching the gems is satisfying with the game's sound design, and getting cascades and watching as all the gems start falling and disappearing as the points rack up and the funny low resolution voice announcer dude congratulates you is one of the greatest feelings in gaming. People compare this game to Tetris, and I'd say it's a pretty good comparison - when things fit just right, it's a good feeling.

That does bring up the issue of randomness. As my pre-Bejeweled self expressed, it can seem like the game is basically just random in deciding whether or not it'll drop the right gems in when you need them. As post-Bejeweled me will confirm, lots of cascades will happen not because you planned them, but because the right gems generated from above at the right place (which is good and fun sometimes, but...). Sometimes it can be unfair to feel like you're making all the right and careful moves, only to get screwed over by bad gem generation, or even worse (and most INFURIATINGLY), the game will randomly decide to give you a cascade that ends up interrupting a move you're trying to make by shuffling the gems around and bricking a part of the board. Furthermore, while I can't confirm whether or not the gems that fall from the top are randomly generated or not, I felt that the later levels (in Normal mode) would give you less and less useful gems for the situation.

However, there's strategies you can employ to try and reduce the chances you'll get screwed over. Generally, you want to try and make matches near the top of the board at first, then make ones near the bottom when things start getting tricky in order to move gems around with gravity, or hopefully get some cascades to clear things out. I'd say it isn't any more random than getting screwed over by not getting a straight line piece in Tetris, and it isn't any less fair then the later Tetris levels where it gets so fast you can't move pieces to certain locations - and if you dared tell any pro Tetris player that the game is luck because the pieces you get are random, your ass is getting t-spinned out of the room. Bejeweled is the same way I think; there are pro moves you can make that aren't 1000% sure, but very good for your chances - I've been playing for a little while so I know this, but I still have much to learn (as you'll see when we get to Bejeweled 2, but that's a different story).

Music

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Something notable about Bejeweled is it's YUMMY soundtrack. It's in the "tracker" format, so it's played live in-game with its own instruments, sort of like how a retro game console would do it, and it's better than generic Windows MIDI instruments.

The soundtrack was composed by electronic musician Peter Hajba (proving once again that Peters make the best stuff😎), also known as "Skaven", who's gonna be reappearing in the future for sure - and this is one heck of a start. The soundtrack is made up of three songs: "Autonomous" for the title screen, "Network" for normal mode, and "Data Jack" for time trial. All do an excellent job at creating a bright industrial electronic vibe that's catchy as all hell.

"Data Jack" in particular just blew my balls off the first time I heard it and the Sega Genesis-ass drums kicked in; it pumps you up and gets you scanning the board to find matches and watch the gems go flying. "Network" is also perfect, going much slower and more thoughtful, while also bringing straight heat with the way the music changes and evolves.

The only negative is that I think some people might find the whole bleep bloop retro style a bit annoying and grating. But me personally, I like electronic music and catchy stuff that has a little gritty character, so I love this soundtrack.

Verdict

Bejeweled, even here in its most basic form and after all these years, is still super addicting and fun to play. I love seeing how far I can get in both modes, whether I'm deep in thought and vibing with normal mode, or in the mood to kick some butt with my eyes darting across the screen in time trial.

Maybe not EVERYTHING about the game has aged super well, and there's plenty that later versions do much better than this entry, but the basics are all here and accounted for, and the presentation is still better and more professional than other shovelware, copycat match 3 games I've seen online before.

★★★☆ Enjoyable

Bejeweled 1-3 & Twist are relics of a time before puzzle games just became ways for mobile developers to mine ad revenue for revives, or pull some psychological tricks to extend game time by forcing you to wait for lives and stamina or whatever. Original Bejeweled is just like original Tetris, and I think it's worthy of being on the same level - it's a simple game you can pick up and enjoy, no BS.

I think even this first entry holds its own against current offerings, and even against its sequels to an extent. Later versions can get a little explosion-happy, which is great in its own way, but there's also something to be said about the rawness (& nostalgia factor) of this one.

I actually DO recommend checking out one of its sequels first (in fact, even something like Microsoft's replacement might actually be objectively better AND its online w/o download), but I can't give this game two stars man, it's just so damn good. Check it out if it looks appealing!

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