Peggle, Xbox Live Arcade - Review

2100 MS Points £16.63
Peggle - 800MSP

Review by Will Templeton


Peggle on PC, for the uninitiated, is the poster child for the casual game that can break through to the hardcore (or vice versa). It's Positive Reinforcement: The Game, essentially a mash-up of Breakout and Pachinko wrapped up in pretty colours, classical music and characters based entirely on puns.

Each level has a certain amount of pegs, twenty of which are orange. Clearing all of the orange pegs completes the level. Levels progress in difficulty, achieved with placement of pegs, obstacles and restrictions. And to be honest, I'm probably over-explaining it.

Unfortunately, now you know that, there's not much new to say about Peggle on Xbox Live Arcade; It's Peggle, and it's on Xbox Live Arcade. For eight hundred moon pounds you'll get the same adventure mode and challenges as the PC version, with the added bonuses that you'd expect from a Live Arcade title - leaderboards and online multiplayer.

As well as the local hotseat multiplayer of the PC version, Peggle XBLA now has an online 'Peg Party' mode, where four people play simultaneously to achieve the best score. This is essentially the same thing as single-player mode, just with a real-time competitive element - nothing you do affects other people's boards. While it's a nice addition, I would have enjoyed a mode similar to that available in most versions of Tetris, that allow you to mess with your opponent's screen or whatever.

There's also the suspicious absence of Peggle Nights, an expansion that is entirely included on the DS version of the game. Yes, it's an expansion of equivalent size to the main game, and it would perhaps be unreasonable to expect it, but the reason it's so stark an omission is that there's really nothing new about Peggle on XBLA. The single-player and challenge modes are exactly the same, the online mode is essentially single-player again, and there isn't even a score comparison to your closest friend on each board in the style of Geometry Wars 2, which is a glaring oversight.

For some people, Peggle again will be enough. It is and always was an incredibly addictive game. But if you own neither and are deciding between which to pick up, I would have trouble recommending one over the other.

(Apologies for the lateness of this review. I was distracted by Peggle.)

2100 MS Points £16.63
Peggle - 800MSP