Hooked even a non-gamer like me

I discovered a watered-down version of Bejeweled 2 on Yahoo's home page one night shortly before midnight, clicked on the link, and next thing I knew it was 4 a.m. and I had time for three hours sleep before I woke up and went to work, feeling like a zombie. I literally couldn't pull myself away from the screen. A few hours of play and I was hooked for good; I had to get the full version. Next day I sent in my $19.95 to Yahoo, got a registration number five minutes later, downloaded the full version and I was off and running.

The full version of Bejeweled 2 is great fun. You get four different games and the graphics are gorgeous. You can size the board to fill your whole screen or just a part of it. When you put the game in full-screen mode you can also put the graphics in high-rez, but I've found the graphics look fine on the smaller screen. You can turn the music up, down or off; ditto the sound effects. I find the music kind of distracting, but the sound effects are fun, especially the voice intoning EXCELLENT or INCREDIBLE when you set off a particularly good cascade, or the BOOM when you explode a power gem.

There are 4 different games you can play -- the classic game, the timed action game where you beat the clock, the puzzle game (a lot of different puzzles, actually) where you clear all the jewels and the neverending game that goes on and on and on. In the classic, action and neverending games, you start off with a square screen with 64 jewels arranged 8 by 8, and the idea is to get three in a row, four in a row which creates a power gem, or five in a row which creates a hypercube, and rack up points. Once you complete each level, you shoot through what looks like a multicolored wormhole into the next level; each level gets more difficult than the one before.

The classic game is the one I play most often. You keep going through levels until you're stuck, and then a "nyah-nyah" kind of sound blats out of your speakers indicating the game is over. The action game really gets the ole adrenaline flowing; you can literally feel your heart pounding as an incessant beeping indicates that you're running out of time. The neverending game is just what it says and once you get through ten or so levels there doesn't seem to be much point to it. In the puzzle game you try to clear all the jewels off the board using different strategies with power gems and hypercubes.

People will argue endlessly about the best way to rack up points: play from the top, play from the bottom, save your hypercubes to blast your way out of a stuck board, etc. etc. I've tried a lot of them and all I can say is sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. The best way to rack up points is to set off a cascade that will keep the gems falling and falling and falling; I've done this a number of times and always by sheer luck. And if you've never accidentally exploded a hypercube before you were ready to use it by setting off a power gem at the wrong time, you don't know what raving frustration is. AARRRGGGHHHHH!!!! So far, my best score on the classic game is 163,361 points (got a nice symmetry to it), but the first time I played the timed action game I scored 506,800. Hoo-boy, I'm a Superior Collector! (What are all the titles anyway, does anybody know?) I've heard you get extra points if you clear 20 levels in the classic game, but the most I've cleared so far is 16. Oh well.

You can download Bejeweled 2 from several online web sites or you can buy it in a store, whichever is cheaper and/or more convenient for you. It's a fun way to spend an hour or so, but beware -- it's extremely addictive. Playing it in the office is not advisable. It's blocked on my office computer anyway, and it's probably just as well. If I could play it in the office, I probably wouldn't have a job any more.