There are hundreds if not thousands of match-3 type games in the world, but I think most people will have played, or at least heard of Bejeweled, a simple game to get into, but very addictive and hard to put down. It has now arrived on PlayStation Network for download. If you have played this on a PC then using the PlayStation pad to move around and swap gems takes a minute to get used, but no more than that.
The game initially starts with four game modes to choose from - Classic mode is your standard, match-3 mode removing gems by matching three or more horizontally or vertically and to progress to the next level you have to fill up a bar by matching and removing gems, you keep playing until you cannot perform anymore moves.
Action where you are against the clock, so you have to keep matching gems to keep the timer going, if the timer runs out then it is game over, this can get frantic as the timer starts to get gradually quicker, great fun.
Endless mode, is exactly what it says, unlimited moves, no time, nothing special, just ongoing fun.
My favourite, however, was Puzzle mode, where you have to remove gems which are placed in a specific way, this adds a bit more thinking to the game and gets quite challenging, there are many puzzles in this mode, and they get tricky as you progress, I spent many hours just playing this mode alone. You can get hints if you are stuck but you do lose points for this.
There are also a few secret modes to unlock as you progress through the game, which adds to the longevity of the game, but to be honest if they were not there, you will always come back to the original modes.
The visuals are crisp and clean and although in HD, they are nothing to shout about, but then it really doesn't need to look overly amazing as the gameplay gets you hooked early on. The voiceover guy sounds like he should be doing the voiceovers in a Mortal Kombat game, which is very amusing. There are leaderboards for all the modes so you can compare your score to your friends and other players around the world, and trophies are also available to collect.
If you know of Bejeweled then you will like this a lot, if you haven't it's worth downloading the demo to try it out. Basically this is an addictive little game you will dip into for 5 minutes, then realise you have been playing for hours!
