I'm sure you all know of the annoying addictiveness of Bejeweled - a strange, Tetris-like craze for switching gems around to make space for... more gems. It's still going strong, but why not throw some classic elements into the mix?

The basic idea of Bejeweled is that there is a board of gems. You need to switch them in such a way that you get three or more in a row. These gems then disappear, you get points, and the gems fall down to replace them, with new gems coming in on top.

But let us visit a world where people do battle in this unusual way. I suppose it leaves less mess for the cleaners afterwards or something - anyway, the aim is now to match the skulls in order to lower your opponent's hit points. You can also match the different coloured gems in order to obtain mana - useful for unleashing special abilities against your opponent.

You can choose your hero at the start, but the story is the same - your kingdom is under attack by mysterious forces, and as a young warrior you must find out what's going on and put a stop to any such nonsense. All jokes aside, it is a fairly engrossing story - with plenty of optional bits branching off.

You send your hero running around the map to different points, having been sent there on different quests (be they part of the main storyline or optional side-quests). Once you're there, a battle takes place - it might be against an orc captain, an assassin, or an undead necromancer amongst others. The game then drops into the afore-mentioned puzzle duelling system.

The battle system is almost as basic as it sounds - matching 4 in a row gets you another turn, while 5 in a row will provide you with another turn and a wildcard - a gem that can be matched with any other colour of gem. Of course, the main aim is to hit those skulls to damage your opponent - the first one to 0 hit points loses.

The special abilities that use your mana range from useless to game-breaking - one might damage your enemy and give you two turns in a row, while another might give you a temporary damage bonus or increase your mana. Still others can heal you or inflict damage-over-time on your enemies. Basically, if you can imagine an effect then it is probably in there somewhere.

Of course, your hero doesn't have all of these spells at his disposal - which brings us to another aspect of the game. You can build a citadel to be accessed in any of the cities that you own. The buildings are fairly inexpensive and can be completed quite quickly. One building allows you to capture enemies. If you can complete a mini-game - a certain combination of gems start on the board. You must clear the board in order to capture the enemy. Another building will then allow you to learn spells from the captured enemies.

Certain types of enemies can be trained as mounts - depending on which mount you choose, you get an extra spell. You can also train your mounts up to give better bonuses. My personal favourite was the Griffon, as it allowed my character to move around the map the fastest.

In addition to these parts, your hero can also search for Runes - these appear at each junction in the game guarded by a powerful foe. Once you have these, you can combine them into weapons with tailor-made bonuses. Alternatively, you can just buy magic items from the shops in each town. There is a massive range of weapons and items - some fairly useless compared to others, as in many such systems - but of course there's a limited number of slots on your hero's inventory.

You can take it as well - it is the exact same game but against another hero characters, so see if your game-breaking combinations can stand up to other players' attempts.

Throw in a nice selection of Achievements for you Gamerscore junkies, and you have a nice little package, very attractive for the price. Alternatively, you can take a look at the portable versions on both and DS, or the console versions on the and the PS2. Definitely worth a look for all.

90%

By Richard Bright

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  1. gta sam amdreas Unregistered 1 year ago

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