XBox Game Pass Review: Peggle 2

When I opened the second round of votes for my Random Sel-X series, I had absolutely no clue that Peggle 2 would win out on the votes. It was one of those games I had casually seen as a PSP title and a lower costed XBox 360 game, the kind of game I would expect to play on my phone as opposed to a full blown console game - I mean it was made by the same people behind Bejeweled, who wants to watch me play something like that? Well, three people as it turns out. But now my run on twitch is over and it is time for me to pass judgement as I did with my first Random Sel-X game. Roll the article!

General Gameplay

Peggle 2 presents no less than sixty base game levels to play through where the basic aim of the game is to remove every orange peg laid out in each level by firing a finite number of balls into them. The more in depth aim is to try and accomplish a high score whilst doing so by utilising various special score multiplier pegs that are dotted around each level or by pulling off tricky "style" shots to bag you additional points. Each level also details three side achievements for you to accomplish should you so wish to, most of the time including the infamous "clear all pegs" goal which, honestly I only accomplished once, alongside two other, more level appropriate goals.

Clearing all orange pegs is the main goal of these levels

When first playing Peggle 2, it's easy to fall into the mindset that this will be your standard two dimension Candy Crush/Bejeweled puzzler affair where the levels keep going and going with new obstacles being presented as a way to implement some kind of learning curve into an otherwise straight forward game, however this is where the game was pleasantly refreshing as, whilst there are new kinds of obstacles that are introduced they are typically one offs. Instead what Peggle 2 has opted to do is group every set of ten levels under different "Masters". Masters have specific abilities that activate when your ball hits the fabled green pegs, of which there are typically two per level. These range from Bjorn's standard guidance ability that shows where your balls are going to bounce to abilities like Berg's which actually move the pegs that your ball hits so they can skate across and hit other pegs.

Jeffrey's "Bowlder" ability smashes through pegs with ease

PopCap have done a remarkable job of keeping the gameplay for Peggle 2 as interesting as possible with the limited scope of vision they have for their game, and they proudly boast their "excellent level design" early in game when they point out that every special peg (including the orange ones) randomise every time you play a level, and this helps to encourage players to experiment with new types of shots as opposed to essentially playing the same ones over and over again to beat each level, with the exception of trials which are the same no matter how many times you play them. But in the end you are doing the same routine over and over - firing balls at pegs, the ball pings around and destroys said pegs... there's only so much you can do with that formula, and whilst Peggle 2 does a great job at making the fun of the challenge last as much as it can there is only so much you can do to keep the player engaged with that kind of gameplay.

User Friendliness

The first time you load up Peggle 2 and start a new game on the title screen you will be launched straight into the levels headed by the master Bjorn. Bjorn is a unicorn that acts as the game's tutorial master, fittingly guiding the player through all the nuances and things to know for the game, and whilst many games will often continuously punish the player in tutorial levels until they "get it right" or entrap them in a particular instance until they understand what it is the game is trying to teach them, Peggle 2 is far less invasive and instead gives you a quick tip at the start of the first few levels as they introduce each mechanic that can be brought back up by just pausing the game. Because the game has no "lives" system and you can keep retrying a level when you fail it as many times as you want it never feels invasive or slow in this regard.

Bjorn can help guide you in more ways than one

The layout for the game is beyond simple and every aspect of the game you could possibly want to keep check on is laid out in a pretty obvious manner, unless of course you didn't read some of the instructions the current master was telling you about at the beginning of the level or you can't remember the optional goals they had set out, but even then these are easily refreshed by just pausing the game and viewing them in your own time. The score multipliers are presented in an easy to interpret way to the right, the number of balls you have remaining are laid out neatly on the left, any special abilities that are active are in bright green at the top and the direction in which your little cannon at the top of the screen will fire is made very obvious with the exception of some trials where the lack of aim is the point of the challenge. Even the masters will have various animations that will make it clear if you're running out of shots, have a special ability that's active or to just indicate that you pull off a particularly tricky style shot.

However what most impressed me with Peggle 2 is the tiny quality of life additions PopCap have added to the game, the one that sticks out most to me is being able to "nudge" your aim a step by pressing the left or right bumpers to give you maximum precision for when you need it, which especially useful during Bjorn's Super Guide ability. It's these little additions that turn Peggle 2 from being the frustrating mess that it could've been to the polished end product it actually is.

Controls

The control scheme for Peggle 2 is, as you can imagine incredibly straight forward. You use the control stick to move your cannon left and right and press A to shoot your balls. It really is as straight forward as that and to be absolutely honest there is nothing more I can really state on the matter, as such I have decided to award Peggle 2 four stars in this area as, whilst it doesn't do anything to complicate the control schemes and it does add the incredibly useful nudge buttons, it feels like there is something lacking that could have given this game a bit more depth and with it perfect score in this category.

Graphics

The graphics for Peggle 2 are a vast improvement over its predecessor, opting to go the route of a more animated, cartoony look that feels vibrant and full of colour as opposed to the slightly off putting early MS DOS game look that the first game had.

Every character in the game is vibrant and full of character

One of the things that Peggle 2 tries to achieve that it makes very clear from the offset is to convey a certain theme with every master and it does this incredibly well. Bjorn's levels are very fantastical in the way they are displayed, Jeffrey's levels have a very earthy feel to them with lashings of greens and browns in their colour palette palette, Berg's levels use large mixtures of white alongside a wide spectrum of colours to give them a wintery, almost christmasy feel to them, Gnorman's levels are highly desaturated with a heavy urban feel to them and Luna's levels are wonderfully spooky in pretty much every way you can imagine.

With games as vibrant as Peggle 2 using such a wide array of contrasting colours, it's easy for the aesthetics to look too loud or to have those colours clash and interfere with the user's gaming experience, but Peggle 2 is absolutely stunning as far as two dimensional puzzle games go, however despite how nice the visuals appear in this game it is very standard in the kind of style that is common in these types of games and whilst it pulls the look off incredibly well it does nothing to set itself apart from other games with similar aesthetics.

Overall

Peggle 2 is a genuinely pretty game with interesting and unique gaming mechanics that get you hooked from the off and rarely feels like a chore to play - even when it is tough, completing a level you've been stuck on for a while feels so immensely satisfying that the pros tend to outweigh the cons in this respect. However, for all its spit and polish there is no getting over that the game itself, though fun to play for a time is sadly limited and once the levels are done there is little left to entice you to come back to it.

In summary, Peggle 2 is a great game for anyone looking for a chilled out and fun little puzzler to kill an hour or two now and then, but it is not a game for those looking to invest a lot of time into a gaming experience. I feel this may have been somewhat mitigated with some kind of random level generation mechanic for when you had completed the main game but, alas, it was not meant to be.

- D J Driver