The beauty that is Peggle

See?  I do respond to reader requests, so keep sending them in!  One video game that I've been having a lot of fun playing is a cute little Xbox Live game called Peggle.  That's just where I play it.  You could play it pretty much anywhere (I think it's even on the iPhone!)

Peggle is kind of an odd form of addiction.  I play it non-stop for a while, until I finish the Adventure levels, and then I just keep going back to the Challenge levels as well, but not as often.  It's a wonderful time-waster that's classically simple to play but hard to master.

So just what is Peggle?  I'm glad you asked.

The basic premise behind Peggle is that you have a board of "pegs", blue and orange, and the object is to get rid of all the orange pegs.  There are also two green pegs and a purple peg too.  You have 10 balls to do this, though you can earn free balls as well.  At the top of the screen is the "gun" (or whatever you want to call it) that shoots the ball out.  The ball then goes from the top of the screen to the bottom of the screen, bouncing off pegs and going all over the board before finally hitting the bottom.  If the ball falls into the catcher that is going back and forth along the bottom, you get a free ball.  If it doesn't, then your ball count goes down by one.  Either way, it's time to shoot your next ball.

As you can probably guess, a rudimentary knowledge of physics, or even just some skill in billiards, will greatly help as you figure out where to shoot the ball to get it to bounce where you want it to.  But it's not necessary.  All you do it point the gun and shoot!

You first go through a series of "Adventure" rounds with various "professors" at the "Peggle University" helping you along.  Each professor has a different power that hitting a green peg will unlock (e.g. the dragon will give you a fireball on your next turn that will just cut through all the pegs rather than bouncing, and the owl will give you "Zen" shot on your next ball, which basically means that it will adjust your next ball from where you aim it to give you the best result).  Each professor has five levels before you move on to the next.

What happens when you finish these Adventure levels?  You can do either Challenge levels of increasing difficulty (like having more orange pegs to knock out or winning a round above a specific score) or you can play against the professors in Duel mode.  In Challenge mode, you can get the help of a specific professor (or a random one, like I do), which can be very helpful.  You can also play online, though I haven't found anybody online last time I checked (that may have changed with the add-on, Peggle Nights just having come out).  It's all rather addicting.

The elegant simplicity of the game is what keeps you coming back for more.  The sound effects are cute as hell, but you don't need them if you are listening to music or something else (I play the game when the Canucks are on Pay-Per-View and I don't want to pay, thus I listen on them on the radio).  The graphics are marvelous for a game like this (my wife's favourite activity is asking me what the heck the professor is supposed to be, though once you know what they are, it's much more readily apparent, and the images are very nicely drawn).  The physics is really good, the levels are thoughtfully designed, there just really isn't anything wrong with this game that I can think of.  It can be frustrating at times, but that's because I shoot the ball at the wrong place or at the wrong time (sometimes the pegs move, or you have to wait for the catcher to be at a certain position for a good shot).  But that's my problem, not the game's.

I can't recommend this game highly enough. It's family-friendly, too.

And speaking of Peggle Nights, you can get it on Xbox Live for 400 MS points (or about 5 bucks).  It's almost a whole new game, with 50 new levels and bunches of new challenges.  All for 5 bucks! You can't go wrong with that!  I don't know what it costs on other platforms, but I would guess it would be similar.