E-Mail This Article to a Friend Pop a Cap in your day The Internet's best time-killer BY MITCH KRPATA

Aside from Fark.com, there's very little on the web you can count on to amuse you every time you load the page. Fortunately, for gaming addicts in withdrawal, or people with a few minutes (read: hours) to kill, there's PopCap Games, a site with 21 original, highly-addictive, and entirely free web games. Say goodbye to your productivity.

The newest game on PopCap.com is Bejeweled 2, the sequel to the award-winning puzzle game that launched the company's reputation. The underlying gameplay principle is the same: you're shown a grid containing six types of gems. You must line up three gems either horizontally or vertically, but you can only swap a jewel with one adjacent to it – and every move must line up at least three gems. The addictiveness of the first game very nearly reached Tetris proportions, but the sequel has two new game modes to eradicate whatever semblance of a social life you may have left.

Action mode gives you a time limit to finish each level, and Puzzle mode provides static configurations of jewels that you must clear entirely. If any are left at the end, you lose. Both modes are worthy diversions, but the meat and potatoes of Bejeweled 2 is the Classic mode. This time, instead of the bonus meter filling up to give big point totals, it leads to a new level. And while the gameplay isn't any different from level to level, the inclusion of new, high-resolution background images is a nice touch. In fact, the sequel boasts remarkably beautiful graphics for a Flash game; the original is an eyesore in comparison.

New gameplay wrinkles include Power Gems, which explode and destroy all the jewels within the blast radius, and Hyper Cubes. When swapped with any kind of gem, Hyper Cubes will destroy every similar rock on the board. These are both cool features, and they're well-integrated into the gameplay because you earn them only by stringing together four or five jewels of one type. Less cool is the bizarre 2001: A Space Odyssey-style transition between levels, but it certainly doesn't hurt the gameplay.

The biggest problem with Bejeweled 2 is the peculiar voice-over work – the reverb makes it sound creepy, which is not to suggest that any vocals were necessary in the first place. Pulling off a good combo invokes a Shang Tsung-style Excellent, and at the end of each board you're treated to a sinister-sounding Level complete. It just doesn't work, but as with all PopCap games, you can turn the sound off.

While playing Bejeweled 2 for, er, research purposes, I was reacquainted with some of the classic PopCap games that have, at one time or another, dominated my every spare second. My favorite has long been Rocket Mania, which resembles nothing so much as the classic NES game Pipe Dream.

Like most addictive puzzle games, Rocket Mania features things falling and blowing up. In this game you have nine fireworks tubes and a grid of 54 pipe segments – some are straight, some bend at a 90-degree angle, some are T-shaped… (You've played Tetris – you get the idea.). The goal is to forge an open path from the left side of the board to the fireworks on the right by rotating the pieces in 90-degree intervals. The more rockets you can light at once, the higher your point total will be. Setting off multiple rockets will cause coins to appear on the board, and running your fuse through the coins will upgrade your rockets. The game gets a little less fun once your rockets max out at level 10, but there's no reason not to start over.

For those of you seeking a game with more realistic themes and perhaps some important lessons about love and life, make sure to stay far, far away from Insaniquarium. This is the tragic-yet-inspiring tale about a home aquarium's currency-shitting guppy population coming under siege by alien invaders. It's also a useful lesson in resource management and supply-and-demand economics.

Essentially, the point of the game is to foster a thriving guppy population by feeding them and blasting demonic extraterrestrials with a laser. When the guppies mature, they start pooping out coins that you can then put towards more guppies, better food for them, and, yes, stronger armaments. Plus, completing new levels earns you little animal buddies to help out, like a snail that trawls the floor for money you've missed or an oyster that occasionally offers lucrative pearls.

In the later levels, when eight or nine guppies are swimming around, jettisoning gold and silver, barracudas are dropping even more precious gems (but alas, they subsist on your guppies), and the alien invasion is coming fast and furious, Insaniquarium truly earns its moniker. The entire game is played with the mouse, and you'll be clicking so hard your arm hurts. If you're looking for the most efficient way to develop carpal-tunnel syndrome, this is it.

To play these games and more, visit www.popcap.com. Unless, of course, you happen to be at work.