The Zodiac is well known in the community as a great idea which has not really been followed through with great games, at least not games specifically designed for the extra hardware it offers over regular Palm OS devices.
The Palm OS development scene, however, is extremely well established and has a long history of producing extremely entertaining and polished commercial games. Most of these are puzzle games and Bejeweled 2 is definitely no exception, as you have probably guessed by the name and screen shots.
The touch screens on Palm OS devices, and all PDAs for that matter, lend themselves extremely well to the puzzle genre offering an unprecedented level of control in a mobile device, and Palm OS devices have, until now, been none too powerful and incapable of running anything more complicated. Despite the new powerful devices we have the genre seems to have stuck as a favourite of Palm OS developers, and this is definitely not a bad thing.
You would never guess it, but Bejeweled 2 is the sequel to Bejeweled, a rather average puzzle game in which the goal was to match chains of three or more jewels in order to make them disappear so that more jewels could fall from the top ultimately giving you more jewels to clear until you beat the high score your grandma set on your PDA. A simple concept, but a fun one none-the-less.
You might think it impossible for a puzzle game to build on such a simple concept enough to warrant a sequel, but Astraware have done just that by taking the solid base of Bejeweled and not only building on the gameplay but adding entirely new play types as well. Bejeweled 2 livens things up in a whole plethora of ways.
The most striking change, and the first one you will notice when firing up Bejeweled 2, is the interface. The new look is extremely sleek and futuristic with a sexy rendered backdrop and beautifully drawn buttons, coupled with the fantastic musical score you immediately get the impression that it is an extremely polished and, at a mere $19.95, extremely good value game.
An all new profile system means that each new player can store their own preferences, and will never have to enter their name to register high scores after finishing a game, a very simple yet very nice touch which could prove handy, I have often found Bejeweled to be an extremely good "adult pacifier", it is instantly playable by anyone so multiple profiles will ensure that nobody fiddles with your own personal preferences when they have a quick go.
Bejewled 2 sports new, unobtrusive and lively music which should suit any player, sure it runs the batteries of your Zodiac out but I could not resist keeping the music on to liven up the game. The ambient "spacey" nature fits beautifully with the overhauled interface that Bewjeweled 2 sports and helps present a very highly polished overall package which far exceeds most all the games available on the Tapwave website. In fact, I am sitting here listening to the music as I write the review, it reminds me of my synthesiser music days of Tubular Bells and the theme from Beverly Hills Cop. Like all those classic synthesiser hits the music also "evolves" as you listen to it, always presenting something new and never getting to the level of repetitiveness where it just begs to be turned off.
If great music is not enough for the Audiophile in you, Bejeweled 2 sports stereo sound, meaning the pings, pongs, bangs and zaps on the right side of the play area are heard in the right speaker, and vice verca. Also a deep voice booms encouragement as you pull off combos and welcomes starts you off with a “go” and ends a level with “level complete”, the quality of sound in this instance is a little below par but nothing worth complaining about, I much prefer the tribal shout of “Zuma” from..well..Zuma.
Building on the gameplay itself Astraware have incorporated some new jewel types which appear when you clear a certain number of jewels, specifically 4 cleared at once yields a jewel which explodes when you clear it. 5 cleared at once yields a jewel which will remove any jewels of the colour you swap it with from the play area, this often leads on to much chaos as the combos rack up and jewels pop out of existence all over the place. Even though these may be the most major changes the thing that actually adds most to the gameplay is the progressive nature, it is now possible to "clear" a level when you reach a certain score. This adds a distinct feeling of progress to the game which Bejeweled lacks. Whilst this may not sound like much, a sense of progress gives a sense of achievement, which is something every game should possess.
Additionally, Bejeweled 2 sports a total of four play modes - Classic, Action, Puzzle and Endless.
Classic is your regular game of Bejeweled with the new jewels mentioned above and the sense of progress adding a little more to the experience and making it more than just a pick-up-and-play puzzle game. When playing classic you have no worries and no time limits, you just play on until you exhaust all possible moves in a level.
Action is Classic with a time limit, pressing you to forgo careful thinking and find each move as quickly as humanly possible, this makes for a very good quick competitive mode unless you find yourself letting an extremely good player have a “quick go”.
Puzzle mode is, perhaps, the biggest new feature of the game and makes a progressive puzzler out of Bejeweled by challenging you to clear different configurations of jewels in the correct order, it requires a great deal of careful thought and makes an extremely good puzzler. You progress through different stages, each of which consists with five levels that you can choose freely, you must clear at least four of these levels in order to progress to the next stage. The level map is displayed as a galaxy with a total of sixteen stages. Each stage displays the five available levels around a central core, once you have cleared four levels in a stage your “warp drive” becomes ready and you can tap on the central core to “warp” to the next stage. The galaxy map allows you to “warp” to levels in the stages you have cleared so you can replay them at any time, warping. Each stage also has a beautifully rendered backdrop which, whilst the main interface does not, covers the whole Zodiac (480*320) and gives something a lot prettier to look at than your virtual input area. Astraware have done an extremely good job of making games in the transitional stage when 480*320 devices are starting to take over but support for 320*320 is still paramount, whilst a full screen play area would be nice it would also change the gameplay itself making the game differ between devices, the backdrops should make any Zodiac owner happy for now. As you progress Puzzle mode makes use of the Time Bomb, Hyper Cube and Power Gem to add even more to the gameplay, making the puzzle mode a complete and highly playable game in itself which would easily have been worth the $19.95.
Last, but not least, is Endless mode which simply lets you play Classic mode endlessly with the same progressive play of Classic and Action.
There are also a total of five secret gameplay modes to unlock. Giving a total of nine modes and one hell of a lot of replay value, and incentive to play.
Overall, most everything in Bejeweled 2 screams quality and no puzzle-game fan will be disappointed, the game is highly accessible to all age groups and is a great way of pacifying a family member for a few hours, just ensure you mute the sound first because it only gets annoying when you are not playing and it makes that magical transition from sound to noise. The beautiful backdrops fill up the newfangled bigger screens and the profile system means you will never have to put up with your input area after each game just to enter your name for high scores. If you are looking for new games for your Zodiac, or any Palm OS PDA for that matter, then make Bejeweled 2 one of them. To buy Bejewelled 2, or try out the demo to get a better idea of just how good it is you can visit the site here: http://www.astraware.com/palm/default/bejeweled2?skucode=0079-445-0166
Note: Whilst this game has no story per-se the space travelling from world-to-world theme is excellent.
Philip Howard
