Bejeweled 2 along with the addictive game Peggle bundled together for a good price equals instant win.
Puzzle games never have to be complicated to be a lot of fun. Tetris was a bunch of blocks, yet it helped launch Nintendo's Gameboy into stardom selling over 10 million copies. To this day Nintendo is still the leader in the hand held market. A successful puzzle game is one that is easy to jump into and get hooked on right away. Bejeweled is one of those puzzle games that is easy to get into and very hard to quit once you start playing. The object of the game is to align at least three jewels of the same color vertically or horizontally in line with one another. By doing so you eliminate those three jewels and allow more jewels to drop down on the puzzle screen. By lining up at least four jewels in a row you can create a jewel that causes an explosion that wipes out several jewels around it, including the ones of its same color that it was re-aligned with.
Lining up five jewels of the same color creates a jewel that allows you to move it to a jewel of any color and it will destroy all the jewels on screen of that color. There are four different game modes in Bejeweled. In Classic Mode you play until you have no more possible moves. The more points you score and the higher level you play on, the more difficult it is to align jewels and also assure yourself with a move on the next turn. Time mode is where you race against the clock. Aligning and eliminating jewels buys more time, but time ticks away faster as the game moves on. When time runs out....you lose...of course. Endless mode is set up where the game doesn't end. So you can blow up jewels and work on your Bejeweled puzzle skills that way. The Puzzle mode is the mode that is a little different than the other ones. Each stage has a series of puzzles all in which you must move the jewels to certain spots to solve them. This gets tricky very quickly and is probably the most challenging of the game modes.
Peggle is the other game that was bundled with Bejeweled, and I think it may actually be the better game in my personal opinion. Peggle is kinda like that game on the Price is Right called "Plinko." The one where the contestants drop down their chips and hope it lands in the $10,000 dollar slot. Peggle is much more exciting however. You get to shoot the balls using a cannon. Th goal is to shoot all of the orange balls on the screen. There are a bunch of blue balls that accompany the few orange balls. The goal is to hit the orange balls within a number of shots. The blue balls are there to be more of a shield, but hitting them does give you points. There are also green color balls. They do something different for each stage. They're more of a treat to help you when you need it. Each new stage features a new goofy looking animal who plays as the "guide" of the stage. Each stage has a unique twist that makes that particular stage different, so the game manages to stay fresh and sun throughout.
You got two incredibly addictive puzzle games. Graphically and sound wise these two games are very sharp. I mean....there's obviously not going to be much to look at. Puzzle games consist of shapes and.....that's just about it. But Pop Cap produce some great great PC puzzle games, and their production from a budget title stand point is top notch in my opinion. What really counts is that both of these games are extremely simple and fun. Which is what a good puzzle game should be.