Bejeweled 3 Glimmers on PSN Tomorrow

Hello PlayStation.Blog fans, and other citizens of Earth! I’ve got some good news for Bejeweled fans: We stopped watching kitten videos, fixed the hamster wheel, and are now happy to report that Bejeweled 3 is finally coming to PlayStation Network! Huzzah!

Now if you’ve played Bejeweled 1 or 2 before, you may be asking why you should upgrade to Bejeweled 3. “How much different could they make a Match 3 game?” you may ask. “What do I do this time—Match 4?” “Do I really need to give those clowns more of my money just to swap more gems?”

I’m going to be perfectly honest with you: Yes, you do. I mean, “need” is such a relative word, when you think about it. I mean, sure, I suppose some of you “need” to pay the rent, or feed your family, rather than buy the new Bejeweled. Whatever. Frankly, the landlord can probably wait a few days, and I’m sure there are plenty of leftovers in your fridge if your family starts whining at you while clutching their swollen, distended stomachs. Meanwhile, those gems in Bejeweled 3 aren’t going to swap themselves, are they? No sir. No, they are not. I rest my case.

But perhaps you want a few details on what it is you’re actually buying with Bejeweled 3, other than the satisfaction of knowing your purchase will spark a dudebro-like high five amongst the bean-counters over here at PopCap. You may want to know, for example, what you’re getting in Bejeweled 3 that you couldn’t get in 1 or 2. This is where I come in, thanks to this handy cheat-sheet I printed out and stapled to my dog’s head as I type this. So here’s what you get:

8 modes of play, including:

• Classic (regular Bejeweled, but now better-looking!)
• Quest (kind of like an RPG, minus the characters, story, dialog, or combat, or anything else RPG-related. But there are 40 puzzles to solve!)
• Zen (You can’t lose! Be happy! You are your own shiny gem!)
• Lightning (a fast, time-based game kinda like Bejeweled Blitz)
• Four more “secret modes” of play that you can unlock, but that I can’t spoil here even though you could totally Google it in like one minute!

12 trophies and 20 badges to collect!

The satisfaction of knowing you justified me writing this blog post!

Seriously, I know there’s not much I can say that’s going to sway you or not. You probably already know whether you’re going to buy it or not. And that’s cool. All I can tell you is that if you are a Bejeweled fan, you will not regret it. I promise you. All the new modes are great. I personally didn’t know how much you could vary the formula in ways that would be fun and not too gimmicky, but I’ll be dag-gummed if they didn’t do it. And, sure, I work for them, so you could blow all this off as just more marketing hoo-hah, which, sure, it is – but as soon as you get to (SPOILER ALERT!) Diamond Mine mode, you’ll know I was right. Because good grief is that thing addictive.

So if you’re already a Bejeweled fan and don’t have 3 yet, get ready to get it on Tuesday afternoon! And if you’re not a Bejeweled fan yet, this really is the best one yet. You could do a lot worse with your money. Like pay your rent!