Ah Bejeweled. How many hours I've wasted, matching gems on grids. And PopCap are set to eat up even more of my precious time this winter, when Bejeweled 3 launches on the Xbox Live Arcade and DS.
Bejeweled 2 featured 4 modes - classic, the standard matching gems mode; action, where you had a time limit to match as many as you could; puzzle, where you had to eliminate all gems from the screen; and endless, where you can match gems forever (or so it seems) - as well as 4 (much harder) unlockable versions of each. Bejeweled 3 takes it even further, adding in a few new modes - and giving the existing ones a bit of an overhaul too.
Based on what we know of the PC version, the Classic mode is still present and correct - simply match gems of 3 or more to gain points - although a few 'new' gems have been thrown in, which should seem more than a bit familiar to anyone who's played Bejeweled Blitz. There's a new Quest mode with 40 stages of puzzles, each of which has its own objective, such as rescuing butterflies by matching them with like-coloured gems - and a few mini-games thrown in. Another addition is the slightly odd-sounding Zen mode, which is like the endless mode from Bejeweled 2, and lets you play for as long as you like, but also tries to relax you with music/sound effects and breathing patterns... The Lightening Mode, which is essentially Bejeweled Blitz, giving you 60 seconds to make as many matches and rack up as many points as you can.
Yay Bejeweled!
Like Bejeweled 2, there's a selection of 4 unlockable modes too - such as Butterflies, where butterfly-shaped gems begin at the bottom of the screen and move up a line every turn - you need to match the coloured butterflies with gems of the same colour to make them disappear before they reach the top. Ice Storm has vertical ice columns that gradually creep up the board - making matches above and below the ice slows it's ascent, and vertical matches shatter the ice in that column. If the ice reaches the top of a column, it freezes it so you can't move any of the gems - and should this happen to all the columns, it's game over.
Launching some time this winter, we'll hopefully get a release date sometime soon - and maybe some more information on the modes in the Xbox Live Arcade and DS versions, seeing as we've been promised "adaptations that look great and play even better on each platform" - so make sure you check back for that.
