Peggle Review - Xbox 360

8.5

Gameplay: 8
Graphics: 8
Audio: 8
Multiplayer: 8
Innovation: 7

Introduction

Peggle, created by the well known developers PopCap Games (of Bejeweled fame), started life as a downloadable title available exclusively for PC. The game’s massive popularity has lead to the game receiving a sequel, as well as ports to game consoles. In the game’s latest development, PopCap have made it available as an Xbox Live Arcade download.

Gameplay

Peggle is a simple game with hidden depth. Beneath the game’s outwardly attention grabbing appearance of colourful backgrounds, characters, pegs, pretty much everything really, lies a game that harkens back to arcade gaming from simpler times. Peggle could best be described as a fusion of Puzzle Bobble and Pinball; you control a pinball firing cannon at the top of the screen, while the game’s stages are filled with what are essentially multicoloured bumpers known as Pegs. The cannon allows you to change the angle the ball will be fired at, but after the ball has been fired, all you can do is watch. Only one ball is in play at any given time, until it makes its way to the bottom of the screen, the only thing you have to do is hope you’re lucky. Your objective is to hit, and thus destroy, all the orange pegs on the screen by firing your ball and making it bounce, and hit, as many pegs as possible. Making this harder are the abundant blue pegs which divert the course of your ball. As you would expect, there is a limit to the number of pinballs you have at your disposal, ten balls are allocated at the start of each game, with extra balls being awarded for scoring enough points with one ball. As an extra incentive for good aiming, a bucket is constantly moving back and forth at the bottom of the screen. Normally when the ball reaches the bottom of the screen it is lost and your number of balls decreases, but landing it in the bucket returns it to the cannon. The addition of the bucket really helps to add excitement to what would normally be a pretty average game, watching the ball make its unpredictable journey towards the bottom of the screen, never knowing for sure where it will end up.

As you can probably tell, the game involves a fair bit of luck. While where you aim the ball initially will obviously have some impact, once it’s out of the cannon, it has a mind of its own. The game’s pinball physics are top notch; each collision with a peg sends the ball bouncing off course, what appeared to be a straightforward path can end up taking a very different turn. Mixing things up a little more is the addition of special abilities. The game features quite a few animal characters that you can play as, and each one has the power to change the gameplay in some fashion. Hitting one of only a few special green pegs on the field can grant you various abilities, ranging from a heavy ...