Bejeweled 3 (DS) Review

I demand a bedazzled 3DS. It's only fitting.

I love traditional puzzle games. Bejeweled may not be quite the age of Tetris, but it's grabbed a bit of that "sweet spot" for itself. You know the one; one of the few bunch that can grab a hold and cause "one more game" syndrome. Bejeweled truly is the crack of the video gaming world and I still don't know just what does the trick. Is it the simplicity of moving blocks into lines of similarly-colored gems? Just sliding gems around to clear them out, only to have more fall from the sky and keep the whole machine turning? Why is it so appealing?

Have you missed it up until now? I can't imagine anybody who would read a review on a gaming site can be unfamiliar with Bejeweled, but it really is just manipulating one gem at a time, combining it with two or more of the same type and color, and watching the colorful, a-splody light show commence. It's as simple as a game can possibly be nowadays… without involving swine and the viscous, enraged avians that attack them.

So, with that simplicity, there are eight different modes to spice things up. The regular "play 'til you can't play no more" mode and Zen (endless) are back for anyone looking for an everyday fix, but timed modes like Lightning and Diamond Mine mixed with technique modes like Poker and Butterflies, then tossing Quests into the mix to break the action and Ice Storm to bring extra pressure. It's really as addicting as ever; the only time it left my DSLite was because I moved it to my 3DS, and it has yet to be interrupted by any other game!

The problems? It really breaks down into two small gripes: the graphics are a little muddy and there isn't a helluvalot new in the package. This is, at its core, a "more of the same" situation. If you re-release Tetris, it isn't much of an event since it will play exactly the same, because if it didn't, it wouldn't be Tetris, right? It'd be some crazy knock-off nobody wants to know about.

As it is though, with the new modes and its release on the DS, Bejeweled 3 might be the game I'll lose a few days on… or a few nights… y'know, I haven't picked it up in the past six minutes, I think I should play a little more…