Peggle and The Company of Doom
Hail, friends and newcomers alike.
It’s been quite a while since I actually posted anything here, so I thought I’d get the ball rolling again by reviewing Peggle and the Company behind it. Leaving the blog dormant was actually not deliberate, for once! I got Peggle late last year, after a friend on Facebook posted many statuses into the early hours of the morning claiming it to be so addictive that you physically can’t stop playing. She was right. Sort of.
For those of you who are not ‘in the know’, here is a synopsis of the game:
You are a student at the Peggle Institute. Your coursework is simple – complete every level in the game, taking guidance from each of the ten Peggle Masters; Bjorn, Renfield, Claude, etc. Levels consist of firing ball bearings at pegs. There are four colours of peg: orange, blue, green and purple.
The aim of the game is to light up all of the orange ones. Depending on how many orange pegs you have hit, the score multiplier increases dramatically. The blue ones still give you points, and are sometimes necessary to be cleared in order to reach the orange ones. The purple one changes places with every turn and is worth a point boost. You get a powerup every time you hit a green peg, depending on which Peggle Master you are using.
Every five levels completed unlocks the next Master to guide you. On the first playthrough you are asked to use only the Master you are studying for but after you complete the game you can use anyone on any level. Powerups are varied, from an arrow that improves your aim to an auto-calculator which actually changes your aim entirely.
On completion of the game you are dubbed a ‘Peggle Master’ with your own certificate and trophy, and may go on to play again or to try the ‘challenge’ and ‘duel’ modes.
With that explanation out of the way, let’s get on with analysing it for its intrinsic value.
Gameplay – 8/10
The main thing, as with any game really, is how you play it. The game itself is very intuitive. It’s so easy to play that even my mum was capable of completing it. Play basically consists of aiming the cannon where you want the ball to go and clicking the mouse button to fire. The ball will head directly for the position where the mouse pointer is, unless there is a peg or obstacle in the way.
In terms of replayability, every orange, green and purple peg is positioned randomly, so you can never have the same game twice. Some levels even consist of moving parts, where pegs will dodge your ball and you have to keep a close eye on where you’re firing.
When you hit the last orange peg on a level, you are treated to some flashing lights and a wall of sound in your headphones or speakers, including fireworks going off. It’s a real confidence booster when you’ve just wasted four hundred tries on the same level.
The game is good for building reactions and judging where something is likely to go given half a chance. The only real problem I have with the gameplay is that sometimes you are forced to utilise a shot which involves bouncing off moving parts or judging a nigh impossible shot where you have to hit something that’s under a barrier. This should not be – it means that the person who really just plays for the joy and doesn’t want to have to think about the shot is unacknowledged.
Graphics: 8/10
The game’s graphics are suitable for the target audience – kids and families. The characters are all rather cartoony, and the backgrounds on levels often depict situations such as a badger sunbathing or something equally ridiculous (a frog in an inner tube for example), which just adds to the humour of the game. There’s not much to say about the pegs themselves, although you do get a meter on the right hand side of the screen which tallies up how many orange pegs you have lit up.
Sound: 10/10
The sound simply MAKES this game. Throughout every level you’ll get some real chillout feel-good tracks played over the back, so you never feel pressured to do it perfectly straight away. I really do love the sound. Every time you hit a peg, you get a ‘dong’, and some classic sci-fi whooshes and zaps are there too, complementing the flashes you get onscreen. The Zen owl powerup gets a very suitable Tibetan gong sound effect when activated.
Whenever you complete a level, you are treated to a choral version of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, which, while shockingly impressive the first few times, gets old, FAST. You almost want the level to just END when it happens so you don’t have to listen to any more chanting. Luckily, there is a workaround for this – you can convert a music file of your own to OggVorbis format, rename it to “odetojoy.ogg”, and drop it in the Music folder in the Peggle directory. It’s quite a thrill when you hit a peg and hear the chorus from Livin’ on a Prayer playing as loud as you like. 
It’s also quite a thrill when you clear every peg on a level. The sheer brilliance of the word ULTRA smashing onto the screen with WHOMP noises over the top of your music:
Now, you may be confused as to why there are lambda symbols, portals and what looks like the companion cube in that level. I’ll get to that in a bit.
Overall score: 9/10.
Now Peggle in itself is actually pretty damn good, won’t you agree? A beautiful little timewaster that quickly becomes a timespender, and is soon your most played game.
The company that made Peggle, is Popcap Games. You may already know them for such gems as Bejeweled or Insaniquarium. Peggle is by far the longest and most ridiculous franchise they have now. Peggle was soon followed up by Peggle Nights, the ‘sequel’.
The problem I have with the term ‘sequel’ is that Peggle Nights is basically exactly the same game with differently randomly placed pegs, and different backgrounds. The ingame music is the same as Peggle, and Ode to Joy is still there! Oh, and the story? It’s Peggle. Set at night. Hence, “Peggle Nights”. How imaginative.
Oh, all right. They added another Peggle Master. But the downside of this is that the new Master is so overpowered that you can use her to defeat every level, with no exceptions. I still played it to the end, though, to see what was new. Guess what? You just get a little cartoon of a trophy in this game, too.
Following Peggle Nights came Peggle EXTREME Edition. Kind of like if you filmed Alien using the Muppets. Yes, you read that right. In basic terms, Bjorn the Unicorn has a headcrab gnawing on his face, and every level features custom-made art from the Orange Box and CS:S, including Hunters, Striders, Sentry guns, the Pyro, DOG, etc, and custom sounds for failing and completing a level, including the Heavy saying “YOU DID WELL” and GLaDOS mentioning that “If at first you don’t succeed… you fail.”
It was a good work at humour and appealed to many hardcore gamers as a recognition of Valve’s work, and was released about the time that Popcap made the move to put all their games on Steam, so Valve helped out with some artwork and sound.
After THAT (yes, really) came Peggle: World of Warcraft Edition.
I did not bother to even play this one. I was getting bored of the lack of variation.
As always, Ninja Duck, signing off.
UPDATE! I uploaded a video of the different music I’ve been using in place of “Ode to Joy”, below:
