Bejeweled Blitz Guide 

It takes the glorious match-three mechanic of the classic puzzle franchise, pumps up the volume on the jewel and match bonuses, and then condenses it all down into frantic, one-minute bursts of eye-gasmic, point-laden play.Each session ends at the 60 second mark, and the goal is to score more points than people on your Facebook friends list. What's remarkable is how well the game supports its structure; all the high-toned sounds and explosive colors feed into the dizzying time limit, reinforcing a sense of momentum that the other versions of Bejeweled straight-up don't have. Similarly, the off-the-wall points system bolsters the high-score aspect of the experience by giving you tons of opportunities to score ludicrous amounts of points.Needless to say, the game part feels good as always, and the new aspects Blitz brings out in Bejeweled are solid and good, too.Blitz has some other stuff. While not having Game Center to connect with friends and see their high scores, it does support Facebook -- and superbly at that superbly. From in-game, you'll see your friends Facebook scores or even app scores as naturally as you'd expect. It even talks to the Facebook app. Perks in the form of ‘boosts’ can be bought for in-game coins.

The boosts do various things like add time, give you a special or multiplier gem, shuffle the gems twice per game, and detonate all special gems at once. When you buy a boost it lasts for three games before expiring, and you can have up to three activated at any one time. If you run out of coins and don’t want to collect more by playing the game, you can buy more with real-life money. One final way to get coins is the daily spin in which you spin a slot machine in an attempt to get a large pile of coins. Bejeweled Blitz is all about topping your score and the scores of your Facebook friends. If you’ve played the Facebook version of the game before, your scores will sync across both platforms. The match-3 gameplay in Bejeweled Blitz gameplay is completely unchanged from the original Bejeweled. You swap adjacent tiles in order to line up three gems of the same color in a row. Matching four or five gems results in special gems that can clear extra spaces. Additionally, there are gems that multiply your score, coin gems that net you currency to buy boosts, and rare gems that can make your score skyrocket in the unlikely event that they appear.

The fast pace of the game means you must think on your feet when choosing which gems to swap, as opposed to thinking long and hard to set up massive combos. Star gems that get created whenever you form an “L” or “T” wipe out all of the gems in both the star gem’s row and column. Multiplier gems are created whenever you create a large cascade or chain a number of other power gems together in one move. These multipliers are the key to the whole game, as they can quickly be the difference between a 100,000 score and a 1,000,000. The game also features coin gems, which when matched with other yellow gems will add to your in-game bank. The coins can be spent between rounds on special power-ups called boosts. There are five boosts to pick from that range from adding time to your next round to giving you a starting multiplier or the ability to blow up all your special gems without making a match. The game also boasts a “full screen mode,” but the resolution options for this are pretty limited. With a game as graphically simple as Bejeweled, you’d think that running at such a high resolution wouldn’t be a problem for any graphics card – yet we found our system not quite up to the task. With so few options we finally settled on playing it at a lower resolution, but windowed.

Don't expect to find a variety of puzzle or endless modes here — you're going to get one game and one game only. In a social setting like Facebook though, that's all you'll want or need. Competing for a high score against your friends under a tight one minute timer provides the ultimate social Bejeweled rush. You'll be clicking “play again” more often than you'll blink. As you play, your friends leaderboard will appear on the right side of the playing field. Don't think you're going crazy  it really is taunting you. Moving up that leaderboard can be just as addictive an experience as Bejeweled itself. You'll also be able to view your friends score stats over the past few months and compare them to your own. For competition junkies like me, it's a wonderful inclusion. This game caters to the bad sportsman in all of us too, as a “smack talk” feature will let you send messages to your friends and put them in their place. The default message is silly and taunting, but you can change it to anything you like and accompany it with a rude-faced gem to complete the humiliation. It's little touches like this that, while playfully mean-spirited, really help to round out the social experience. The match-3 gameplay in Bejeweled Blitz gameplay is completely unchanged from the original Bejeweled. You swap adjacent tiles in order to line up three gems of the same color in a row.

Matching four or five gems results in special gems that can clear extra spaces. Additionally, there are gems that multiply your score, coin gems that net you currency to buy boosts, and rare gems that can make your score skyrocket in the unlikely event that they appear. The fast pace of the game means you must think on your feet when choosing which gems to swap, as opposed to thinking long and hard to set up massive combos. For the competitive types, offline and online duel matches are included, as well as online party matches where up to 16 can join up and play Twist or Classic together. Party mode is the most interesting feature of the entire package, featuring a meter in the bottom of the screen that dynamically ranks the players involved in the match. These two modes and their competitive variations are all presented with big, bright colors set against down tempo electronic music.Bejeweled Blitz is all about topping your score and the scores of your Facebook friends. If you’ve played the Facebook version of the game before, your scores will sync across both platforms. Unfortunately there are no Game Center leaderboards; so competitions against your iOS buddies is out of the picture, a shame considering how easy this would have been for PopCap to implement. Perks in the form of ‘boosts’ can be bought for in-game coins. The boosts do various things like add time, give you a special or multiplier gem, shuffle the gems twice per game, and detonate all special gems at once. When you buy a boost it lasts for three games before expiring, and you can have up to three activated at any one time. If you run out of coins and don’t want to collect more by playing the game, you can buy more with real-life money. One final way to get coins is the daily spin in which you spin a slot machine in an attempt to get a large pile of coins.