Bejeweled 2

Developer: PopCap Games Price: $9.99 Date Listed in App Store: 7/3/2008 Version Reviewed: 1.0

Bejeweled is one of the top all-time selling mobile applications. The simple yet very addictive game play makes it one of those games you go back to over and over again. So it was a great pleasure that I saw Bejeweled 2 in the App Store. But, wha? $10? That's pretty rough. I took the hit and downloaded it, not for me, but your you, the reader.

So, how is it? Meh. It's Bejeweled. Can't believe I payed $10 for this half-built version. The version here is rather simple -- compared with other platforms (Palm, Windows Mobile) that have a similar application with the same name, Bejeweled 2, by the same company, PopCap. But, this version only has 2 play modes. You can see from here that the Palm and Windows Mobile versions have 4 modes of play. Perhaps they should have just made Bejeweled (1)?

If you are not familiar with Bejeweled, where have you been? The idea is to line up 3 or more jewels by swapping the positions of 2 jewels either vertically or horizontally. You can only move jewels that will allow you to make a 3+ group. The more you can match in a row at once the more points you get. Bejeweled 2 adds a couple interesting single use power-ups when you get 4 and 5 jewels in a row.

The game play that is there looks fantastic -- as it should on the iPhone. I find the very pretty transitions (some sort of rainbow black hole thing) very annoying after the first 3-4 times. Wish there was a way to turn that off.

Overall, it's Bejeweled -- love it or hate it, here it is. It's WAY overpriced. Should be $2.99 until they build it out to a complete product. For those cheap bastards out there, you can also play the web app version of Bejeweled at http://static.popcap.com/iphone/ in Mobile Safari. That will be good enough for 90% of you Bejeweled fans -- at least until PopCap takes that down.