Peggle 2 Stream Summary - 13/03/24

 

It seems that the public are big fans of the not-so-big games. First it was Party Animals, this time it's Peggle 2, and by the rules that I myself have set out I must download and play whatever the public vote on. To be fair though, I've heard very good things about the Peggle series but still, I had no idea what to expect. I asked my friend "is it kind of like Bust-A-Move?" and the response I got was "kind of, but it's better". That bode well for me because I love Bust-A-Move so I was actually pretty stoked to play this one.

Before we get into it, you guys may well have noticed that this article has appeared as a new post instead of a post edit. This is because I decided that, going forward I will delete my stream announcement posts and create a new post with the same title so that I don't spend hours doing a write up only for no-one to read it because it's an "old" post.

Anyways!

Unlike Party Animals, Peggle 2 opened with an actual title screen, so the one person who logged on early to the stream was treated to what was quite possibly the most irritating title music ever. I mean, it's fine for a couple of seconds, but it was on for a good 5-10 minutes whilst I got everything set up properly. In hindsight that might've been why no-one came and joined me, in which case I promise I'll make sure that music doesn't play on repeat next week.

When the stream finally started I pressed new game and got to meet the grey unicorn whose name is, rather unstereotypically, Bjorn. Bjorn then proceeded to explain that the aim of the game was to fire balls from the top of the screen and hit the red pegs, thereby destroying them. Now it must be said, I was given a limited supply of balls (which I could increase under specific circumstances) and my ability to predict the projection of balls in a pinball-esque setting is not what I would call the best, so I originally thought this might be a rage quit game, but as it turns out it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be.

The pegs light up to alert you when a peg will disappear

Because Peggle 2 generally lacks in drama, PopCap decided to insert some artificial suspense into the game by zooming in and slowing down the action when your ball zeros into that final, red peg. This was immensely satisfying at first (because I'm easy to please) but quickly became a slap in the face when I realised this doesn't just happen when you actually hit the final peg, but when you almost hit the final peg. It happened 3 times in a row in a later level when I was trying to remove a particularly tricky peg that was hiding behind some armoured bricks and frankly I felt victimised.

A close up of me hitting a final peg

As you can probably tell by the lack of objectives in this article so far, I still hadn't work out what my gold, silver and bronze objectives were going to be but I was just enjoying the ride at this point. I had quickly worked out that Bjorn was the "tutorial" character of sorts anyway as every level introduced a brand new quirk that would become a staple of the game. One of the most game changing of these were magical abilities. By hitting the newly introduced green pins I could activate the current master's ability, which in Bjorn's case was "Super Guide" that allowed me to see where my ball would bounce after hitting the first pin/wall. Very useful!

Super guide was super useful!

As well as the normal levels I was surprised to see that my game was interrupted with trial levels, which are mini levels where the aim is to clear every peg on the board. These sound incredibly hard but in actuality the pegs are set out in a way that there's a trick to accomplishing this feat. Typically I hate these kinds of levels in games, but the ones I played were so short and sweet that I found them kind of fun.

One of Jeffrey's trials was to basically go bowling

Once all 10 of Bjorn's levels were done and dusted I was whisked off to a screen where I could select another set of levels I wanted to play. These sets of levels were attached to different "masters" and I could only select them if I completed the previous master's set of levels, so in this case I could select Bjorn again, or I could move on to the hippy troll Jeffrey. Judging by the silhouettes it looks as though there are six masters in the base game with a total with 10 levels each as well as 6 trials too. It was at this point I paused the stream and decided to lay down the milestones needed for each medal:

🥇: Complete all levels and trials for the base game masters

🥈: Complete all levels and half the trials for the base game masters

🥉: Complete all levels for the base game masters

So with the ground work finally laid out for my awards I decided to waste no time and make a start on Jeffrey's levels, which seemed to be consistently mountain themed. Now I'm not going to list off every teeny tiny peg I hit, in what order, the layouts of the levels etc. so I will just highlight three things about Jeffrey's segment. Firstly, he was 100% a stoner hipster who loves to drink. Secondly, his magical ability, "Bowlder" throws down a massive boulder that destroys every peg in its path. Third and finally, despite my believing it was almost impossible I managed to complete a level where I knocked out every single pin - good thing I didn't have it down as part of my gold medal milestones otherwise that would have been hugely anti-climatic!

Jeffrey's Bowlder ability smashes and crashes!

Proof of my peg destroying achievement

I will wrap up this stream round up article shortly but I will just state very quickly before I go that I did complete another master's set of levels after Jeffrey's - Berg's in this case. I smashed through all of his levels very quickly (so quickly I couldn't believe there were 10 of them to be honest) but to sum up, Berg is a yeti that resembles Boris Johnson and has the brain of a cheese sandwich, his levels are decidedly winter based. His magical ability is "Deep Freeze" that makes pegs slide around when they were hit by my ball or, and here's where the ability is actually very useful, other pins that are already sliding about because of this ability. It was a really fun mechanic, but one that was difficult to master.

Berg was a "cheeky" yeti

Once I made it through Berg's levels I called it a night, to be continued next week. The next set of levels belong to a master who is known as "Gnorman", and judging from his name and aesthetics I would hazard to guess that his levels will be very earth based, maybe even garden based. Who knows for certain? Either way come and find out with me next week when I will be streaming a little earlier in the week than usual due to a rearrangement of my tabletop gaming schedule (more on that later today).

I'm coming for you Gnorman!... in a few days time

Votes for the next Random Sel-X game are currently open, and as Party Animals is now officially done the deadline for the next round of votes will be after I am finished with Peggle 2 at a time and date to be determined later. Leave a comment on the linked post to have your say in which game I play next!

- D J Driver