Peggle: A Review

When i first downloaded the free trial of this game i thought, oh no, pop cap, shall i even bother.

Oh how wrong i was, where to start, the game seems almost childlike at first, i consider myself to be a hardcore gamer so i thought that i would hate this game, and starting up adventure mode it seemed that i had been treated like a baby, being gently nudged into the game play, speaking of game play…

Game-play

  The aim of the game of peggle is to eliminate all the red pegs from the screen from a sea of blue pegs, by firing your balls into them (I’m finding it really hard to leave out penis jokes). Here is an example of a screen

You fire your balls out of the cannon at the top, and have to hit either the pegs or the bricks.

 The blue bricks or blue pegs are regular pegs, they give you a small amount of score for hitting them and don’t do much else, the green pegs give you power ups, such as enhanced aim or multiple balls. The good thing about peggle is that it is a game of chance, no matter how good at judging angles you are there will always be an unforeseen bounce that will mess up your game plan, this frustration would be awful if it wasn’t for that glimmer of hope at the bottom of the screen there. The bucket, if your ball lands in the bucket you get an extra ball, but it feels like more than a free ball, it feels like the Gods of luck and the Gods of peggle are shining down upon you and giving you there gift. There is one final game-play element which i have yet to mention, and i think that it deserves it’s own paragraph entirely.

Extreme fever!

Behold, extreme fever, one of my single most favourite gameplay elements in video game history, ok so it’s not that good, but it is extremely enjoyable. When you are about to hit your final orange peg, the camera zooms in to the ball and the peg, slowing down time and you get to see if the ball hits the peg, if it does the camera zooms out and turns into real time, Beethoven’s Ode to joy explodes out of your speakers, and 5 bowls appear at the bottom of the screen, each with different bonuses, the outer bowls being worth 10,000 points the bowls next to the middle being worth 50,000 points, and the middle bowl being worth a glorious 100,000 points. This to me is the most addictive element of peggle, especially if your ball bounces around the 10,000 bowl, and then flies into the 100,000 bowl, it is brilliant, i have restarted near-perfect games purely because i only hit the 10,000 bowl, and it is worth it, as when you hit the 100,000 points bowl, fireworks erupt out of it, making you think you’ve just won gold at the Olympics, and for all it’s worth you just have.Kind of. Ok maybe bronze. Maybe not the Olympics. Maybe your schools sports day. Or maybe just in P.E lessons. But it’s still a brilliant feeling.

Graphics

I love the graphics of this game, call it kiddy but it sure is a welcome break from the grit and the grey and the boredom of gears of war and call of duty. Now don’t get me wrong, i LOVE those games. But it just seems like the world is made of grey in those games, whilst the graphics aren’t revolutionary that’s not what is asked of them, what they do is bring a bright colourful atmosphere to an already brilliantly colourful game.

Overall

Overall i think that peggle is a brilliant game, it is fun and is one of those games, which you’ll just have one more game, and then oh it’s 2 in the morning. Whilst some people may frown upon it’s casual gaming style i love it, it’s fun and it’s a nice break from the gray and grit of today’s games, and costing only 800 Microsoft points, it’s worth it too.

My score 9/10

It loses a perfect score rating purely because of what it is, it’s a game of chance, and you can’t master it, as you could get all the orange pegs in one shot, then score 10K on the extreme fever, and have a poor score for it. This for me is Peggles only flaw.