I don't know about you, but my fingers often get awfully twitchy. Sitting still and concentrating on one thing, be it a movie, TV show, or loved one can be incredibly hard and I've always needed to be fiddling. That's where Bejeweled Blitz fits in. But do I enjoy it? I'm not sure.
The latest free-to-play release from PopCap, Bejeweled Blitz takes the standard never-ending game of match 3 and turns into a minute long competitive game of "who can last a minute without dying of stress". Match 3 gems and you get points, making a match of 4 or 5 blocks leads to explosions, which then turn into points. From there you can see how you stack up against your friends and convince yourself that next round you can definitely break through the 500,000 point ceiling you've encountered.
Blitz has lifted some of the silliness from PopCap's other release Peggle, mostly seen in the special perks you can perchase with in game coins. These range from a stampede of horses that set things on fire to a cat with a laser-eye just perfect for destroying gems. The gems that these perks are bought with can be earned in game or can be bought in the app. I've never felt a need to spend money in the game to get the best scores; you tend to earn about 700 coins a game and these stack up quickly, and you can never rely on the perks to guarantee you a new high score.
This is because of the main fault of Blitz. You can spend coins to give yourself the advantage, but you're ultimately fighting against chance. One game can go amazingly well, with possible matches cropping up everywhere, while other games have you sticking to one corner as the game ensures there's always one match available on the board. There isn't enough time in a game to properly look at the board and determine the best combos, and so a couple of mis-steps or an unlucky draw of gems and your game, and possible bonuses bought, are wasted. Because of all this, there is a certain level of skill used to play the game quickly, but the overall deciding factor in victory more often than not feels like chance.
So why do I keep playing it? I'm not sure. As a free game it's good fun, but the luck factor in the game cancels out a lot of player skill and can make purchasing anything in the game feel like robbery. Maybe I'll go back to the better, more skill based, Drop 7.
Bejeweled Blitz is available now on iOS and Facebook for free. Don't buy anything in the game, it's not worth it.
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