Game Review: Bejeweled Blitz Beta on Facebook

Hello Facebook fans! For those of you that are familiar with the game Bejeweled Blitz, there is a Beta version now playing on Facebook. It's still in beta format so scores aren't being saved and there may be some bugs that need to get knocked out, but I recommend you go try it out when you get a chance. If you have a Facebook account, the link to go to is: http://apps.facebook.com/bejeweledblitz/beta.php. If you don't have a Facebook account, then you need to go to facebook.com and signup if you want to play through Facebook.

I wrote an article a while back called, "Why Play Bejeweled Blitz?" You can find the article by clicking here if you're interested in reading it. I enjoy playing it thoroughly and I intend to keep going until I get bored with it, which I think may take a long time. The beta version just came out in early September 2009 and I wanted to give it a test spin and let you know what things I found interesting about it.

The firs thing I noticed about the beta version of the new Bejeweled Blitz is that it feels more like an arcade game. The graphics and fonts have definitely been enhanced since the last edition and they have all these new features included. If you listen to the sound effects of the game it really feels like you're at an arcade playing instead of on your home (or work) computer. I like the sounds better on this one than the old one, although it took me a few turns to get used to it; expect the same adjustment for you.

The other thing that's really interesting to me is that at first the game seemed slower than the last version, but then as I kept playing it, the game seemed to get faster. The other difference I noticed is that you can actually have a point in the game (I suppose depending on how well you do in the speed round perhaps) where you play the game in hyper-speed. I'm not sure if that's what the game is actually called, but that's what I'm calling it.

One of the best features of this game is that it's a lot easier to make points. I have had successive high scores in just a few times playing it already. It's just easier to get the four gems together and even the five gems together. There's also this feature called the "Last Hurrah" where if you get some kind of gem you get a chance at bonus points at the end. Way cool feature; I need all the help I can get!

Overall, I'd say the new version is more like an arcade and not as primitive as the previous version, although the previous version made you work harder for your points than this one. In the previous version my all-time high was around 152,000... I've already eclipsed that playing the new version. Could it be that there are new milestones to reach in the newer version? I'd be curious to see how my other friends who are regulars at this game do with it. They're probably reaching plateaus of 300,000 and 400,000 if I'm doing fairly good at cracking 100,000.

I recommend you give the beta version a spin. Give it about a good 15 to 20 minutes consecutively to get a feel for it; then you can assess it for yourself. By the way, if you're interested, there's another article on here that has a link for cheats and tips to the game. Click here to read the article written by Matthew Pogan. I doubt that I'll go and see what the cheat sheet is; I think it would ruin the game for me. For those that are interested the link is available. For me half of the fun is trying to do it the regular way, even though at times I get frustrated that my score is less than mediocre. I'm about to go back and play some more myself. Happy gaming... and don't forget you do have a life outside of Bejeweled Blitz!