peggle nights |

Publisher: Valve

Developer: PopCap

Release Date: 9/16/2008

Available On

I’ve never played a Peggle game before, but I heard a lot about the new Peggle Nights, so I took a peek, and I liked what I saw. Peggle is basically what the name says: You shoot balls from the top of your screen and skillfully bounce them off different colored pegs to get the highest score. Now you’re probably asking, Why is this game so different from similar games? Maybe because this game has charm and a lot more than just a basic mechanic. The game has “stories,” or characters, wrapped around certain abilities that each one has when you hit a green peg. Some have a guideline, some will spawn multiple balls, some make the ball catch wider (more on that later), and a lot of other different helpful abilities make each set of levels play differently. The pegs are sorted kind of like a Lite Brite (remember those? No? Ok, Google it right now), where the pegs are stuck in the background and some even move. This makes each level different and more challenging. At the bottom is a “ball catch” (basically a basket) that moves back and forth, and if your ball drops in there, you get a free ball. Sometimes you may bounce it off the rim or just shoot it straight in there, and you get extra points.

You can earn extra points by hitting purple pegs and orange pegs from long-distance bounces (hit all orange pegs to clear the level). If you get over 25,000 points in one shot, you get a free ball. Sometimes if you don’t hit any pegs and you just shoot straight to the bottom, a coin will pop up, and you may get a free ball if you’re lucky! At the end of the round, four holes open up at the bottom for up to 50,000 points if you get it in the middle for extra points. You get awarded 10,000 points for every ball you have left.

The game gets really addictive thanks to its forgiving difficulty. You can pretty much clear most levels in less than a few tries, and the difficulty is never all that punishing. This helps make the game more fun and addictive to play. You’ll spend a lot of your time building your skill by bouncing shots around the pegs, trying to hit as many orange pegs as you can in one shot to get a huge score. At the end of every round, you get an all-time score count, and this is put up on the worldwide leaderboards. You’re probably wondering how the game is on the audio/visual front, and I can report that it’s very nice. The game has bright, colorful graphics with well-animated effects and perfect ball physics, and everything just feels right. At the top, where your shooter is, your character for that stage is up there with eyes that follow your mouse, and they make faces depending on your performance. Each level has different moving backgrounds, and this makes things never seem boring.

The game has great music, lots of different pinball sounds, and some pretty crazy fireworks at the end of each round! When you’re all done with this, you can play a challenge mode that has certain objectives you need to meet to earn up to 60 trophies. So there is plenty to do here, and for the $20 you pay, it’s one of the best arcade PC games you can buy. Load up Steam and enjoy Peggle Nights (but you won’t enjoy Steam).