Pop Cap Hits! Vol. 1 for PlayStation 2 Reviews by Gamers

Trying to translate a popular Internet title into a popular console title is a pretty tough gig. If a game's made a name for itself as a free program online and wants to come to your PlayStation 2, it should have a wealth of extras, improvements and more to justify you plunking down your dollars to play it. Basically, the console game has to be light years ahead of its online counterpart.



That doesn't happen with PopCap Hits Vol. 1. For $20 you get Bejeweled 2 and AstroPop. The web gets these for free.



Not familiar with these staples of online arcades? Bejeweled 2 has you matching colored gems to make rows and columns of at least three gems so that they'll disappear and give you points. Match more than three and you can get all sorts of nifty upgrades and block-clearing goodies. AstroPop drops you into a spaceship with a giant magnet attached to its bumper and you suck up colored bricks. Get four or more blocks together and slam them into the rest of the blocks to score points and erase like-colored blocks. Clear more than four, and you'll get more points, combos and what have you.



Sound fun? It is. These games have curled the toes of countless casual gamers locked at their work terminals for quite sometime now -- hell, Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords ripped off the Bejeweled formula, tossed in RPG stuff and made a bazillion dollars.



However, should you buy PopCap on your PS2? I have to say no.



Yes, there are a number of modes -- Bejeweled 2 offers an un-timed game, puzzle mode, beat the clock option and a never-ending round while AstroPop lets you choose between a classic game and a survival game -- and both games record your high scores, but these minor additions really can't justify forking over your Andrew Jackson for this disc.



To begin with, everything's incredibly simple. The menus are just there, the graphics are basic at best, the music is the same elevator-type you'd expect from an online arcade game and there's really nothing to unlock or keep you going other than two additional pilots in AstroPop. You're chasing your high score.



There's no multiplayer, there aren't any leaderboards, and Bejeweled 2 offers you hints throughout the game so that you can literally press triangle before every move and never have to worry about thinking for yourself during the puzzles.

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