Peggle

I click, my eye twitching as the tiny marble ricochets of a peg and then rebounds towards the final orange. My fists clench, as the camera zooms right in on the marble. It all goes slow motion as they collide. Suddenly the screen explodes in colour, particles flying everywhere as “Ode To Joy” blares out of my speakers. I jump to my feet and scream in relief! I’d been on that level for ages…

Peggle is one of many casual games developed by Popcap and distributed on Steam. While everyones heard of Bejeweled (an extremely popular internet game, so popular my cousin actually bets on it through yahoo games) Peggle is mainly only known to those who bought the Orange Box and got Peggle Extreme for free. Either way, if you’ve heard of it before but dont have it, go buy it! Now! From here! However if you’ve never heard of this at all, then read on…

Peggle is a mix between pinball, and those games where you drop balls past the little pegs to get points at the bottom. That doesn’t really make sense does it? Thought not. Well, lets put it this way. Your given a a board of “Pegs”, colored circles that are scattered across the screen (normally in conjunction to the spectacular artwork behind it) and you have to fire marbles to hit all the orange pegs. Once you hit all the orange pegs you progress to the next board and do the same. There is a distinct difficulty curve, with the last four levels becoming a swearathon for those who are easily frustrated (i.e Me) but still maintaing the ease of other casual games. I cleared this in around 6-7 hours (which is longer than Portal) but shorter than most puzzle games. It’s certainly strengthened by the unlockable challenge levels, but to be honest there’s no real reward for completing them and with some of them bordering on the impossible I didn’t play them all to completion.

Where Peggle manages to shine however is with it’s characters, unlocked by progressing through the story mode. Each one of these wacky and quite frankly bizarre characters (of which there are ten) have there own special “power”. For example for the first character, a unicorn named Bjorn would you believe, has super guide, a Puzzle Bobble style help guide for securing those tricky orange pegs while the dragon Lord Cinderbottom has a fireball that burns all pegs in it’s path. Although it may not seem it at first, each of these powers are balanced and extremely helpful considering which level your playing, although the Egyptian cat character may be an exception.

As well as the powers, there are other ways of securing more points as well as additional marbles (you only start with ten). At the bottom of the screen is a small “Bucket”, when your ball falls in you get it back. Also, considering how many pegs you hit in one turn you can get up to three balls, depending on how may points you gain. There’s also a small purple peg, that when hit gives you a point boost.

Features of the game include an “Adventure” mode, which basically is just what the whole game has to offer in terms of levels and characters, a “Duel” mode which is great fun as you argue whether or not this game comes down to skill or luck (it’s normally luck when they win, I find), a “Quick Play” mode which is just replaying the levels to gain high scores as well as the “Challenge” mode that was mentioned earlier. You can also save your replays of levels if you wish, but personally I don’t really see the attraction..

In conclusion, I can only say this. Peggle is an exceptional puzzle game but wont be winning any awards for anything else, It’s a great time waster, but you’ll be bored after a week or so and it’s certainly not worth £10 in shops. Get it from Steam if your interested, or buy the Orange Box and get Peggle Extreme for free. It’s exactly the same, just with only 10 levels and a valve twist.

Now If you’ll excuse me, I still have some Peggle fever…..