If you haven't experienced the joy of playing a "swapping" game, the mechanics are rather simple. As a general rule you are presented with a square board subdivided into squares that are filled with objects. In the case of Bejeweled, those objects would be jewels. There will be several different kinds of objects on the board, with multiple instances of each object type. Your desire is to swap the position of two objects such that at least one of them creates a row of three or more of the same object. If such a row is created, those objects will go away, the rest of the objects will shift down to fill in the open space, and new objects will fill in the space at the top of the screen. If you're lucky, your actions will create a chain reaction such that shifting blocks will create more combinations of three or more of the same item, resulting in more cleared objects and more points.

In Bejeweled you can swap blocks that are adjacent to each other left / right or up / down. In some of the more recent clones you can also swap diagonally adjacent objects. It's a nifty little nuance that I miss being able to do, but there are enough new features in Bejeweled 2 that more than make up for it. The coolest items to be found in Bejeweled 2 are Power Gems and Hyper Cubes. A Power Gem is formed when you create a match of four jewels. The gem is the same color as the jewels used to create it, and when you use it to create a match, it explodes a few of the gems surrounding the ones you matched. The Hyper Cube is formed by combining 5 jewels in a row. To use this object you simply need to swap it with another object, and it will (with a cool lightning display, no less) remove all jewels from the board that match the one you swapped with the hyper cube. There are also time bombs that will go off after a certain number of moves, destroying all objects one square adjacent to the bomb. Finally there are rocks, which literally do nothing. You can swap them with a jewel, but lining up several rocks in a row won't make them go away. Only Power Gems, Hyper Cubes or bombs can get rid of rocks.

The thing that blew my mind the most with Bejeweled 2 is that there are a total of NINE gameplay modes. I think this is probably unheard of for this type of puzzle game. There are four modes available by default. Classic is your standard "keep leveling up until there are no more moves" style of play. Arcade mode challenges you to fill up a gauge while it is slowly emptying on it's own. If the gauge is completely emptied or you run out of moves, it's game over. Endless is the laid back player's game, which basically plays out like Classic except that you'll never run out of moves. Finally, my favorite of the default modes is Puzzle, where you are presented with a finite number of objects on each level, and you must eliminate them all to beat the level. The five unlockable modes are Original, Hyper, Cognito, Finity and Twilight. I'll leave it up to you to discover what each of those are about. Suffice it to say, there's no shortage of gameplay here.

The game plays great with a stylus, and is quite easy to navigate. Starting with version 1.30, the game also supports non-touchscreen devices, which I unfortunately don't have the availability to test on. I do have just a couple of minor quibbles with the gameplay. On timed modes, it's nice that the corners start to flash, but if you get as focused on the board as I do, you won't notice that. And quite frankly, glancing back at the gauge is too distracting for me. I think they need either a better visual cue, or maybe even an audio indicator that time is running out. The only other thing that kind of bugged me was that when I have hints on, it means that I probably need them. However, it seemed like when I did need them, they quite often took too long to pop up to be useful. If nothing else, it would have been nice to have a setting to determine how quickly hints should appear. Neither of these things really distracted from the addictive nature of the game, but they couldn't hurt.

I've always been of the mindset that graphics were secondary in a puzzle game, but none the less, Bejeweled 2 goes all out in this department. The backgrounds (for as long as you can see them) look great, the objects are well rendered, and the special effects, such as hyper cube lightning and the warp when you transition between levels, are just incredible. The music is very nice as well. It's not quite as catchy as the original Tetris tunes for the Gameboy, which I don't think I'll ever get out of my head, but especially for a puzzle game, the soundtrack is well orchestrated. the sound effects are nothing special, but they suit the game well enough.

There are certainly a lot of "swapping" type games to choose from, and several that are both good and free. However, Bejeweled 2 has made it clear that Astraware and PopCap games intend to continue making their franchise the best of the best. With it's many modes of play, excellent visuals and well written soundtrack, Bejeweled 2 has a rightful place in any casual gamer's software collection.