Pick up and play, puzzle games are a nice diversion from massive, triple A, releases. I enjoy digging into them for a few addictive hours from time to time. I recently came across two old Xbox Live Arcade classics, from the Xbox 360 era, on Gamepass on my Xbox Series X and decided to give them a go. Both have prior releases in their series, but I'll just focus on their last iteration.
These days, digital games span all releases, from small indie to massive budget releases, but back on limited storage space and slower download speeds, the unique library of Xbox Live Arcade was a unique concept. It had its own vibe with its releases and was a pioneer for online storefronts that would be followed closely by the Wii and PS3.
Let’s take a look at a couple of puzzlers, that hit that perfect Xbox Live Arcade vibe! They're originally Xbox 360 games, but are backwards compatible on the Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S family and are included through Electronic Arts on Gamepass!
Let’s take a look at a couple of puzzlers, that hit that perfect Xbox Live Arcade vibe! They're originally Xbox 360 games, but are backwards compatible on the Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S family and are included through Electronic Arts on Gamepass!
Review
Played on: Xbox Series X
Released: 2010
This is a fairly known series from the early Xbox Live Arcade days and mobile gaming, of that time period, alike. It’s a full grid of coloured jewels, where you can swap places between two jewels at the time, either horizontally or vertically.
This is a fairly known series from the early Xbox Live Arcade days and mobile gaming, of that time period, alike. It’s a full grid of coloured jewels, where you can swap places between two jewels at the time, either horizontally or vertically.
It lends some of its idea from er typical Puyo Puyo title, only with a full grid of coloured jewels from the get-go. When you align three jewels of the same colour, or preferably even more, they disappear. To complete a level, you need to remove a certain number of jewels, filling a score bar. The next level of a new set of jewels follows.
The trick is to remove jewels at the bottom of the grid first, making the ones further up on your screen shift their place and fall into chain reactions. Aligning five of the same will grant you a bomb, which aligned with the same three-in-a-row colour will blow up a lot of jewels surrounding it. It’s an addictive concept and always begs for one more go.
My only gripe with Bejeweled in general, and not just this version, is the annoying possibility of no more possible moves, which I'm bad at anticipating. I do prefer a puzzler like this to end thanks to my slow or cumbersome placed pieces, like in Puyo Puyo or Tetris. Your skill of spotting which jewels to remove first and making longer chain reactions of jewels to disappear, improves over time and is key to avoiding a no more move situation.
Bejeweled 3 adds a lot of extra modes to the original formula. Like timed events, a certain area of jewels to be removed or even a laid-back infinite mode for those wanting to zone into a zen-like state playing the game with music on their ears. I quite enjoyed butterfly, where you need to match a certain amount of butterflies before they reach a spider on the top. There's even a mode that combines Bejeweled and Poker!
The game has a typical colourful and relaxing vibe to its visuals and music, with dreamy digital artwork landscapes as backgrounds, soothing music and a robotic voice telling you when you’ve done well with chain reactions. It looks and sounds very typical for a game of 2005 to 2010 era in this genre, it was a nice throwback to see this style again.
Definitely give some form of Bejeweled a go, this version is neat as it adds quite a few new cool modes and it’s on Electronics Arts’ line-up on Gamepass Ultimate as a permanent feature.
What I feel is a typical common nominator of a lot of puzzlers, is the goal of removing either three or four alike coloured stones, gems or symbols. Zuma’s Revenge plays on this, but in a rather different form than the top to bottom of the screen layout of a Puyo Puyo or similar titles.
Zuma’s revenge, and it’s much harder predecessor, simply titled Zuma, presents the player with a board depicting a twirly, typically vortex shaped, path. Along this path coloured balls are rolled from a starting point towards a drain. If one single ball reaches the drain, it’s instant game over for that level.
The trick is to remove jewels at the bottom of the grid first, making the ones further up on your screen shift their place and fall into chain reactions. Aligning five of the same will grant you a bomb, which aligned with the same three-in-a-row colour will blow up a lot of jewels surrounding it. It’s an addictive concept and always begs for one more go.
My only gripe with Bejeweled in general, and not just this version, is the annoying possibility of no more possible moves, which I'm bad at anticipating. I do prefer a puzzler like this to end thanks to my slow or cumbersome placed pieces, like in Puyo Puyo or Tetris. Your skill of spotting which jewels to remove first and making longer chain reactions of jewels to disappear, improves over time and is key to avoiding a no more move situation.
Bejeweled 3 adds a lot of extra modes to the original formula. Like timed events, a certain area of jewels to be removed or even a laid-back infinite mode for those wanting to zone into a zen-like state playing the game with music on their ears. I quite enjoyed butterfly, where you need to match a certain amount of butterflies before they reach a spider on the top. There's even a mode that combines Bejeweled and Poker!
The game has a typical colourful and relaxing vibe to its visuals and music, with dreamy digital artwork landscapes as backgrounds, soothing music and a robotic voice telling you when you’ve done well with chain reactions. It looks and sounds very typical for a game of 2005 to 2010 era in this genre, it was a nice throwback to see this style again.
Definitely give some form of Bejeweled a go, this version is neat as it adds quite a few new cool modes and it’s on Electronics Arts’ line-up on Gamepass Ultimate as a permanent feature.
Review
Played on: Xbox Series X
Released: 2009
What I feel is a typical common nominator of a lot of puzzlers, is the goal of removing either three or four alike coloured stones, gems or symbols. Zuma’s Revenge plays on this, but in a rather different form than the top to bottom of the screen layout of a Puyo Puyo or similar titles.
Zuma’s revenge, and it’s much harder predecessor, simply titled Zuma, presents the player with a board depicting a twirly, typically vortex shaped, path. Along this path coloured balls are rolled from a starting point towards a drain. If one single ball reaches the drain, it’s instant game over for that level.
In the middle of the screen is a frog, which the player can rotate and spit coloured balls with. Your goal is to shoot balls into the rolling line of balls, aiming to align four alike coloured balls. They’ll then disappear, the trick is to get rid of them all before they reach the drain.
Luckily, removing balls grants you random, critical hit, special balls. These, help aid you in various manners, like rolling all balls backwards to the starting point, blowing up a lot of balls or slowing down their roll towards the drain.
The constant rolling of the balls, towards the drain, gives the player a time pressure that only is released by removing balls and pushing the chain of balls backwards. It’s stressful, but in a good way, requiring you to take quick decisions and becoming good at spotting places where you can rack up many balls of the same colour and starting a big chain reaction.
As a sequel, Zuma’s Revenge adds some more variation to the formula with a more fleshed out main adventure mode spread out on an island. It has boss battles at the end of each area, after multiple levels are completed. Level layouts are more diverse too, mostly there are the typical vortex layout, but there's also horizontal levels and ones where you can alternate between two spots from where your frog can shoot from.
Visually the game creates this Polynesian styled jungle island theme with its music, sounds and backgrounds. The pace of the music ramps up too when the balls roll closer to the drain, further emphasising the hectic nature of removing them in time.
I’d never tried any of the Zuma games before and really enjoyed this one, it was quite different from other puzzlers in the same genre. The difficulty to complete it was well balanced, as you progressed your skill to quickly remove the balls and spot chain reaction possibilities along the way. Definitely give this one a go!
Luckily, removing balls grants you random, critical hit, special balls. These, help aid you in various manners, like rolling all balls backwards to the starting point, blowing up a lot of balls or slowing down their roll towards the drain.
The constant rolling of the balls, towards the drain, gives the player a time pressure that only is released by removing balls and pushing the chain of balls backwards. It’s stressful, but in a good way, requiring you to take quick decisions and becoming good at spotting places where you can rack up many balls of the same colour and starting a big chain reaction.
As a sequel, Zuma’s Revenge adds some more variation to the formula with a more fleshed out main adventure mode spread out on an island. It has boss battles at the end of each area, after multiple levels are completed. Level layouts are more diverse too, mostly there are the typical vortex layout, but there's also horizontal levels and ones where you can alternate between two spots from where your frog can shoot from.
Visually the game creates this Polynesian styled jungle island theme with its music, sounds and backgrounds. The pace of the music ramps up too when the balls roll closer to the drain, further emphasising the hectic nature of removing them in time.
I’d never tried any of the Zuma games before and really enjoyed this one, it was quite different from other puzzlers in the same genre. The difficulty to complete it was well balanced, as you progressed your skill to quickly remove the balls and spot chain reaction possibilities along the way. Definitely give this one a go!
