![]() It's the sound of yearning, and when you hit that magic number, you're rewarded with a glorious chorus of MIDI angels. 25,000 points wins a new ball, but you don't watch the score gauge for this - you listen to the rising note of each successive peg hit, building to what seems an impossibly high crescendo. My strongest criticism of the game is that the monotonous lift music of its soundtrack is inexplicably at odds with the smarts of its incidental effects. So, that second thing, and Peggle's greatest triumph, is its musicality. This is probably because the second fabulous thing about Peggle, which I'm getting to shortly, doesn't excite them in the way it does so many others. This keeps Peggle constantly surprising, but also causes some folk to moan that's it's more a sequence of random events than a game. Interference, it's more-or-less impossible to predict what's going to happen beyond the second or third peg the ball hits. It's your slightly disinterested guardian angel, swooping in to save you from certain doom when you least expect it. That the bucket is autonomous, and not controlled like the Breakout bat, is key here. Again, a joyless expert can often ensure he lands the ball in this, but that can't possibly match the unparalleled gift of an unexpected free ball because fortune has dropped your last one into the bucket. Then there is the bucket, a hole that moves of its own accord across the bottom of the screen. I do apologise for that monstrously long sentence, but like to believe it evokes just how lengthy and eventful a single Peggle shot can be. As often as it infuriatingly won't make sense that your carefully-aimed ball has hit a single peg then pinged off into the dread abyss at the bottom of the screen, it'll unexpectedly clip a bit of wall or stray brick and fire back into the heart of the remaining pegs, thus improbably winning you the level on your last ball, with equal regularity. This is game that can be mastered, to a point, by a strong maths brain or snooker genius, but really that's to keep that high-score hardcore sated, and isn't something you should strive for. Orange peg placement is different each time. Two things stop this undeniably simple formula from being just another glorified Pong derivation. Clear all of the orange pegs and you win. It's Breakout by way of pinball - you shoot coloured pegs with a limited supply of balls, and there are various ways to clear more pegs or win extra balls. But, y'know, games journalism generally requires context, so let's get this out of the way quickly. To describe the game's essential nature is almost redundant and can, in fact, sound so mundane in cold text that it could damage potential interest in it. Peggle has made me miss deadlines - the first game to suck me in so stupidly completely since the earliest days of World of Warcraft. Peggle is always there, and always just-one-more-go. Though there is a campaign of sorts (and a long set of individual harder levels beyond that), this is not a game you ever finish. Peggle is as much the definitive casual game as Singstar is, an unashamed celebration of anyone-can-play gaming with enough subtle depths to lure in the high-score hardcore too. While I'd agree it's not the textbook implementation of quality time, and that the image of a couple giggling at a cartoon owl is offensively saccharine, I strongly dispute any criticism of the game's quality and longevity. Sometime EG contributor and full-time Peggle disparager John Walker says we are idiots for this. Truly, this was a game to cross the apparently infinite divide of me choosing to spend my time shooting pretend men in the face and her watching Buffy on repeat. We took turns, we oohed at each other's near misses, wooed at unlikely but spectacular triumphs and clapped with delight when a beaver on a skateboard popped up on the bottom-left of the screen to congratulate us. Peggle, though, we've played together every night for the last week or two, with the PC hooked up to the telly and a wireless keyboard providing makeshift controls. There aren't many videogames I play with my girlfriend, partly because they're just not her thing and partly, I suspect, because of the time I hurled my Wavebird against the wall and stormed out when she beat me at Mario Kart for the sixteenth successive race.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |