Playing all that Bejeweled Pays Off

JorgeDeLaCancha writes "The US Skill Games Championship, heading by SkillJam, will be featuring two PopCap games, Bejeweled 2 and Zuma . Paul Jensen, President of SkillJam, claims that both these games while simple in their concept offer a more challenging level of play to the expert gamers. The grand prize in this championship is one million dollars. Will we soon be seeing more similar tournaments with large prizes based on simple puzzle games?"

Comments

Re:How about Tetris Attack?

[TheGuano]

TA does reward twich reflexes like no other puzzle game, but before you can even get to that point, you have to spend weeks or months REWIRING YOUR BRAIN to see the patterns and setups needed. That's pretty cerebral, imo. Also, a classic like Tetris unquestionably requires some major twitch reflexes, and I wouldn't hesitate to call it a puzzle game.

Re:How about Tetris Attack?

[Rakthar]

At early levels, Bejeweled is fairly easy. You will generally get the pieces you need, and you won't knock yourself out too easily.

At the higher end of the difficulty spectrum, the game really attains a rubik's cube aspect to it which is quite interesting, although too challenging for me. You can't simply destroy jewels, you have to constantly be aware of what pieces you're moving down, and whether they're the kind you need or not. So an early game of Bejeweled would be like a chess game between amateurs - responding to the immediate moves your opponent plays. High level bejeweled would be like chess between masters, where you have to think many moves ahead, and there's time pressures that prevent you from taking too long.

I enjoyed that simple, fun aspect of bejeweled that the early game gave, but I had less and less fun as I got better at it. It moved from something I could do while relaxing to something that took a lot of concentration and effort, and that's not why I play short time wasters.

Good for passing the time

[airjrdn]

When my father became terminally ill, I finally talked my Mother into letting me give her a computer. Instead of Solitare, I used Bejeweled and a couple of other games to teach her mouse movement, clicking, etc.

It's been a few years now, and she still plays Bejeweled every single night. Heck, maybe she should enter.

For those in a similar situation, check out Kyodai Mahjongg http://www.kyodai.com/

Before you dismiss it based on the name, please do yourself a favor and check it out. It's not just Mahjongg. It's about 6 different games all rolled into one 2D/3D app and is very nice with tons of tweaking options, tiles, nice music, etc. My wife and I actually used to have little competitions playing Rivers (part of Kyodai Mahjongg). There's even a two player mode if you're interested.