PEGGLE (DELUXE) 1.0

Category: Games

Publisher: PopCap games
Developer: PopCap games

“...it is simplicity that is difficult to make.”
-- Bertholdt Brecht

OVERVIEW
Peggle Deluxe 1.0 is a single/ multiplayer 2d arcade game. The game has multiple levels where the sole objective is to gather points by clearing the orange pegs. In each level you are introduced to a new Peggle master who can endow you with some skills in order to help you gather maximum points.
Peggle was introduced to me, by one of my friends (who is lucky enough to be working in Nvidia corp.) and according to him this was the perfect game for people like, well, me! So, a little offended, a little curious I took on the game and was simply floored.
The installation was brisk although my insane curiosity made even the reasonably low installation time seem unbearable. The game started with PopCap games’ colorful logo and went into an equally colorful start screen which said “click to play”. And I clicked. : )

GAMEPLAY
Once I started playing the game however, I was hit with a barrage of emotions. Here before me was probably one of the cutest ( yes, cute is a word than can be used to describe a game) games of all time and what was absolutely astounding was that it was unbelievably simple.
At the beginning of the game you are given a certificate of admission to the Peggle Institute replete with the date of admission and signed by Bjorn a gorgeous white unicorn who is supposedly the founder of Peggle Institute. The game can be played in four different modes – Adventure, Quick play, Duel and Challenge. You can unlock the latter three once you have successfully completed the Adventure mode.
The game is simple enough initially. There are orange and blue round buttons or “pegs” and a ball that comes out of a Cannon like contraption on the top of the screen. The Cannon has a window through which the current Peggle master can overlook your activities. The object of the game is to clear the orange pegs and get the maximum points possible. There are ten balls in the “ball-o-tron” (which is somewhat reminiscent of the Pinball game in the older version of Microsoft Windows) which is the number of chances that you normally get to accomplish your goal. In the second stage you are introduced to rectangular bricks and subsequently to green pegs and magenta pegs. The green pegs impart magical powers to the Cannon which can help you clear the pegs more efficiently. The magenta pegs according to the game mean “big points”.
There is a moving bucket at the bottom of the screen which moves constantly. If you can land the ball into the bucket, you get a free ball. So if you were any good at basic geometry in school you’d probably be good at peggle as well, ‘coz it’s all a matter of angles ( the efficacy of your shot depends on the angle at which the ball is hit). Great, intuitive shots earn you style points depending on how cool your shot is. You can also save your really awesome shots and replay them in your upset times for a boost of confidence.
Each stage consists of five levels and each stage introduces you to a new master. There are ten different masters who are actually different animals, an alien, a sunflower and a pumpkin. Each master has interesting sounding names and different magical powers. The magical powers are cool and the presentation is awesome.
Once the ball approaches the 10th peg you witness a blockbuster style finale which is called the “Fever”. Every remaining ball you hit in this stage gives you 10,000 points. Slots appear at the bottom of the screen into which the ball finally disappears. The slots give you an additional 10,000, 50,000 or 100,000 points.
As the game proceeds it gets more and more complex but not impossible. The playability does not reduce at any point of time. The introduction of newer layouts of pegs, with add-ons like psychedelic portals and rotating wheels ensures that the player stays as far away from boredom as physically possible.
Once the adventure mode has been completed and all levels and masters unlocked, you can go into the Quickplay, Challenge and Duel modes. The “Quickplay” mode allows you to choose and play any of the levels you have unlocked with the help of any master. The “Duel” mode allows you to play against the AI or against another player. The game however lacks true multiplayer capability. The “Challenge” mode offers you a huge number of challenges with a progressive difficulty level.
The physics in the game is pretty good. The nature of the ball has been beautifully and accurately depicted. Evidently, a decent algorithm and some good programming is at play ( literally). The ball bouncing off the pegs is realistically simulated.

GRAPHICS, VIDEO AND SOUND
The game is a 2-D game but for that category it’s pretty good, probably the best that I have seen. The colors are rich, quite unlike the general video game console era depictions. The wow (not to be confused with WOW in sound….aaaa!!! there speaks my geek alter-ego) factor of 3D is of course, absent. It is a 2D game in this era of “z”, but well you can’t have everything. Besides, the addiction quotient of the game is so high that you barely pay attention to any other factor.
The sound quality is quite good and the music suits the game appearance. I was particularly impressed by the sound effects produced when the green pegs are hit and magical powers activated. On the whole, the sound is really decent.

AND SO…
The other day, I asked a real toughie gamer friend (read the counter-strike, quake and bloody gory game playing kinds) of mine to have a go at Peggle. After initially laughing me off, he went at it for four hours at a stretch (he still hates me talking about that episode).
Peggle has been ranked as one of the five most addictive games of all time by MSNBC and at no. 40 in PC gamer magazine’s list of top 100 games. To describe its actual appeal is difficult - for some it’s the colorful presentation, for others, the recollection of childhood days spent playing pinball; but what is absolutely irrefutable is the fact that above all, it’s simplicity that makes us keep returning to this game called Peggle.