By Ned Jordan
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, than Bejeweled is one of the
most flattered games in history. The latest Bejeweled clone to hit the DS is
Cradle of Rome, and while it does try to add a few superficial flourishes to its
gameplay at its core it's basically the same puzzle game most gamers have seen a
hundred times at this point.
The gameplay is centered on a puzzle board laid out as a grid. Arranged on
the grid is a collection of icons - jewels in Bejeweled, vaguely Roman resources
in this game such as gold coins, rocks, and ladybugs (yes, ladybugs). Your basic
goal is to swap adjacent icons in order to form a row or column of three or more
similar icons. When a match is made the matching icons are eliminated and the
icons above them 'fall' to take their place and new icons enter the grid to fill
the empty spaces at the top. Cradle of Rome adds special squares to the grid and
requires that a match be made on each of these squares and it also adds a time
limit to each puzzle, but these are minor variants that have appeared elsewhere
many times over. Cradle of Rome's unique variation on the theme is that some of
the icons represent resources such as wood and stone and when these icons are
eliminated the corresponding resource is added to your stockpile. In between
puzzles you can spend those resources to buy a new building and eventually build
yourself the city of tome.
Before you get too excited about a potentially exciting melding of puzzle and
strategy gaming, I have to break the news that purchasing a new building in a
linear fashion every couple of puzzles is as far as the game takes this concept.
It's a classic example of an interesting idea with some unique potential
completely neutered by rushing the game to market without taking the time to
fully develop the concept. The game should be another Puzzle Quest, a game that
brilliantly built an RPG around puzzle-based battles, but instead, it's just
another Bejeweled knock-off lost in a sea of derivative clones.
In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated:
58%. If you feel that you can never own enough
Bejeweled clones, then this is the game for you.
