Niri | Blog

Sony was pushing their PlayStation Move pretty heavily at the recent Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco and I was completely underwhelmed.

Look like an idiot while playing boring games...

This feels like a complete Wii ripoff, nothing more. They are even releasing the thing with a sports game compilation called…wait for it… Champion Sports. It comes with exciting games like Table tennis, bowling, golf, archery and so on.

Yay, more table tennis! *yawn*

Bah, I’m already bored playing this on the Wii, and I don’t see myself spending hundreds of dollars so I can play more of the same sports game in HD, even if Sony claims their system more accurately tracks the controller compared to Nintendo’s Wii controller.

We're like innovative and stuff.

Wired even referred to the games Sony showed off at GDC as janky, visual gimmicks and even laggy and not much fun.

Almost feels like Sony’s fumbling in the dark to keep the PS3 relevant. First they completely screw up the Playstation Home concept, probably wasting millions of dollars. Now they’re trying to bank on the Wii’s thunder by copying their success. What are they going to do next, copy Microsoft’s XBox Live service?

Sony = FAIL

Photos blatantly stolen from Jon Snyder/Wired.com.

I’m a huge Bejeweled fan and if you haven’t heard of Bejeweled you’ve been living under a rock, with no Internet. (Remember you can get the Internet everywhere now so you have to spell that stuff out.)

For the uninitiated, or those who plainly do not care (so why are you still reading?!), Bejeweled came out in it’s first edition some eight years ago. The brainchild of Jason Kapalka and a few of his friends over at PopCap the game was first called Diamond Mine and was purely a Flash-based game back then.

Bejeweled 2: Deluxe

I got really addicted to Bejeweled 2 which featured more polished graphics over the crude, low-gfx first version. Today I play Bejeweled 2 on my XBox, my iPhone and occasionally fire it up on my PC when I need to refresh my brain. (For those days I run out of Brawndo!)

If you want to know how popular Bejeweled is world wide consider this; in the eight years it’s been around, addicts like myself have dropped around $300 million – and more than 6 billion hours – on the first and second game. Consider those numbers for a while. Now, on to Bejeweled Twist!

According to developers PopCap’s been developing Bejeweled Twist for 3 freakkin’ years. This better be a smashing hit because Twist will have some amazingly large shoes to fill.

Get set for a vivid sensory rush as you spin and match explosive gems for shockwaves of fun. Rotate jewels freely to set up electrifying combos, outwit obstacles, and blast high-voltage gems. Rev up with a strategic challenge or just relax in the gem-spinning zone. Any way you play, you’ll find endless ways to win!

Check out the video from the official web site

Some screen shots of the new gem.

Bejeweled Twist

Bejeweled Twist

Bejeweled Twist

System Requirements

OS: Windows XP/Vista
Memory: 256 (minimum); 512+ (recommended) MB RAM
Processor: 1.2GHz MHz or faster
DirectX: 8 (minimum); 9.0c+ (recommended)
Internet: Internet connection is required to register both the download and CD-ROM versions of the game

So what are you waiting for?! Head over to PopCap and download the new demo.