Review: Bejeweled Blitz (PC)
At this point, Bejeweled has managed to seep itself into the collective gaming subconsciousness. Everyone and their mother has played some form of Bejeweled. The simple match 3 formula is unbelievably addictive. The game has been downloaded some 150 million times.
For those of you that look to Bejeweled to mellow out after a long day, Bejeweled Blitz is not for you. This is a frantic race for a high score.
You’ll swear it all comes down to luck. Anyone with a higher score than you just got lucky. Then slowly but surely, things will begin to click. Your average scores will go way up. You’ll start to notice ways of manipulating the board that never dawned on you at first. You’ll begin to realize that it is about more than getting that one lucky piece to fall. Your strategies will improve and you’ll wonder why you missed it when you first played.
Blitz’s biggest addition to the Bejeweled formula is a timer. You have 1 minute to get as high of a score as possible. As the seconds tick away, you’ll be frantically trying to get that green jewel down for a big combo. And when you barely miss it you’ll hit the play again button without even a second thought. The beauty of the game is you constantly feel you are on the verge of your perfect run. Every single time I played a game, I was convinced that this was the time I was going to score a million.
Putting a timer on the game makes me more likely to plug away at it for hours. Like the old school Tony Hawk games, I constantly restart and play again. I say to myself ‘What’s one more minute?’ and proceed to play for another hour. So even though it sounds counter intuitive, I am more likely to keep playing. It really is one of the all time great just-one-more-game games.
As you play, you’ll earn coins that you can use to purchase special ‘boosts’ which give you special bonuses to start the game, like multiplier gems or an extra five seconds of play time. These come in handy when you are trying to earn the achievement style badges for things like cracking 100k or clearing 40 gems in one move.
The game is integrated into Facebook, so you can compare high scores with your friends. You can also play a Facebook version of the game in your browser. You’ve probably seen updates from your friends that they’ve beaten their own high score. My first thought was, “Why pay $20 when I can play the game for free online?”
After setting the 2 side by side, the Facebook version’s tiny screen really can’t compare to the full screen glory that you can experience with the full version. If you do purchase the full game, you get a bonus million coins when you link it to your Facebook account. This can really give you the edge to beat your friend’s high score.
Is it worth the $20? Well I know I have spent 3 times as much for games that I played for a quarter of what I put into Bejeweled Blitz. But with only one mode, Blitz feels a little light in the content. A couple of challenges or a different game type would have gone a long way. I recommend giving the trial or Facebook version a shot before deciding.
This review is based on the full retail download of Bejeweled Blitz provided by Popcap Games.
Tags: Bejeweled, bejeweled blitz, Casual Games, Facebook, PC, popcap
This entry was posted on Thursday, April 22nd, 2010 at 5:00 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
April 22nd, 2010 at 12:19 pm
Scott Reeser says:Having played the Facebook version for months now, I’ve wondered if there was anything different with the pc purchase. And a full-screen effect doesn’t sound compelling as the only feature.
But what are the average scores you see people getting? You didn’t actually see people with 1 million point games, did you? My personal best came before the addition of coins and boosts not even near that pinnacle.
April 22nd, 2010 at 2:11 pm
Dave "shaolinjesus" Corvin says:I didn’t think full screen was a big enough upgrade either until I tried to go back to the Facebook version. I guess its like your tv. You were fine with your 27 in for years until you got a big screen and now you can’t figure out how you ever watched tv on such a small screen.
But yeah like I said in the review I have paid a lot more for games I played a lot less but the game could definitely use a couple more modes.
And No I haven’t seen any million point games but every single time I start up a game I think to myself ‘this is the time you hit a million.’ then I end up with 12,000 and hit restart.
April 25th, 2010 at 8:36 am
Jeffrey L. Wilson says:Bejeweled Blitz is one of the most perfectly executed games I’ve ever played. Everything from the gameplay to sound FX to the graphics are all delicately tuned to make you play jussst one more time. At one point I had uninstall the game from Facebook..it got that bad.
August 15th, 2010 at 2:41 pm
G kassa says:Im having trouble playing Bejeweled blita on face book the game stops game when does come up will play with out me doing any thing or freezes up and does not give me a score what could be the problemThanks
August 15th, 2010 at 2:45 pm
G kassa says:Im having trouble with the Bejeweled blitz 1 min game wont give score or stops playing or freezes up or plays with out me moving arrow .
August 26th, 2010 at 10:40 pm
cole gibbons says:Aight i just calculated out how much time iv spent on bejeweled blitz and its ridiculous. al my points added together is over 1,000,000,000 and iv played for 6.4527 days haha its insane i think i deserve a medal for sucking at life