Peggle

Written by Ben on March 31st, 2007 and posted in Reviews
Tags : 2D, casual, Indie, pc, physics

Peggle is an interesting game. Essentially it’s Pachinko, a game of chance involving metal balls being dropped down boards and falling between pegs. In Pachinko you have no control over the ball beyond where it starts, and even then it rarely makes any difference so naturally this wouldn’t make a fun game… yet here I am reviewing Peggle.

Peggle was developed by Popcap - the same company that made casual game mega hits such as Bejewelled, Chuzzle, and Bookworm Adventures. They have a knack for taking strange sounding concepts and making them fun, and Peggle is no exception. When I first heard about Peggle I dismissed it out of hand, however having now played it (extensively) I can say that it is one of the best games this year.

In Peggle you are tasked with shooting a metal ball at pegs, you have to remove all the orange pegs from the screen. There are a variety of blue pegs in the way but once they are hit they get removed too. There are also pink pegs (points bonuses) and green pegs (power ups).

The basic game contains 55 levels of progressively harder levels. Every 5 levels you get a new “teacher” who gives you new skills for the next five levels. These are things that you can use to improve the likelihood of completing the level, things like flippers or multiple balls.

After the 55 levels have been beaten you unlock challenge mode. This is a further 75 levels which can be played in any order. These challanges add various new types of gameplay. Easier challenges just give you more orange pegs to remove (35 rather than 25) but later on you are given new tasks such as removing ALL pegs, or even playing against coputer controlled players of varying skill. That’s something else, I haven’t had a chance to try it but Peggle also has a duel mode, where you can play against another person - the game modes just keep coming!

Despite the lack of interaction Peggle is curiously addictive and you soon find that you have to keep playing until you beat it. There are loads and loads of levels, and what starts of as a relatively simple game grows into something that is a huge challenge - I thought I was going to whip through all of the levels but you soon find yourself having to retry them multiple times. Despite the seemingly random nature of the physics you soon get a good idea of how things will turn and have a reasonable chance of predicting the first few bounces of the ball so there is still plenty of skill involved.

The graphics, music, and general level of polish in this game is vast, and something Popcap seem to improve on with every game. There are so many animations and music, everything you do gives some sort of response making the whole game very interactive and compelling.

A couple of weeks after I got my review copy I got an email from the Popcap pr lady asking how the review was going. I told her I wanted to complete the game before reviewing it, to which she replied “I guess that means this is a Christmas review” - and she’s right. Peggle is vast. I decided to stop playing and get on with the review or it really would have been a Christmas review. I have completed over half of the game but that still leaves a whole host of challenge levels to go.

Peggle is a wonderful game it will keep you entertained for many weeks. It’s certainly one of the best casual games I have played this year - and I would recommend it to anyone.

• Peggle Information

• Ben's Rating :

  Rating: 5
  Readers Rating : no rating yet
• Peggle website
• Price : $24.99
• Peggle PC Download Now!