Jewel Quest Expeditions (Nintendo DS) Review

Like a lot of people, we like to play our DS on the move. Long four hour train journeys up and down the country are made all the more bearable thanks to Nintendo's touchable little handheld. We've also always been rather partial to the odd puzzle game. Jewel Quest: Expeditions is a great little title that brings a suspiciously Indiana Jones theme to proceedings as you puzzle your way through a number of challenging levels. Whilst it might be somewhat elaborately dressed up in an adventuring storyline with somewhat familiar characters, this is still basically what a lot of you will know as Bejeweled. Admittedly the format has already been done on the DS, and done well, with titles like Zookeeper and Puzzle Quest also appearing on the handheld.

Whilst the storyline will surely make even Dan Brown writhe with pain in his piles of money, the game itself offers some excellent puzzle entertainment. Sure, it might not be original in any way and it might be a bit tacky, but for the price-point this is well worth a pop. Same rules apply, you can move the tiles only by swapping them one position up, down, left or right. Match up three or more and they'll disappear. The difference here is you have to 'light up' the whole puzzle board by solving each and every square. When that's done the level is complete. The puzzles change in shape and size and difficulty and some different elements are chucked in from time to time to spice things up.

These twists and tweaks to the actual mechanics of the game are pretty good, in fact we'd even go so far as to say they improve upon the tired and tested recipe. What doesn't work is the story, which is pretty appalling and only serves to get in the way of you enjoying the puzzles. We'd like to think the ham-tastic writing is tongue-in-cheek but alas it isn't. The graphics are solid enough too and the whole package is really well put together with a nice shiny bow on top.