Vital Stats

Genre: Puzzle
Players: 1-2
Online: Leaderboards

Developer: PopCap
Publisher: PopCap
ESRB Rating: E
Release Date: 12/18/07

Platforms

• iPhone

Peggle has been getting the Tetris treatment, and not just insofar as unscrupulous companies want to steal the intellectual property. Peggle is being ported to every platform known to man, and the casual megahit has some fun for just about every type of gamer. However, the similarities end there because Peggle‘s greater complexity means that PopCap has to re-optimize the game every time they switch platforms, so you never really know what you’re getting when you pick up a new version. The iPhone port has its own perks and quirks, but still feels like Peggle on the whole.

Remix
Randomization is the bedrock of replay value. Take the random blocks out of Tetris, and what’s left is an overly rectangular tangram. Take the loot drops out of Warcraft and you’re left with a slightly dull RPG and a lot of salvaged marriages. Randomness takes a five-minute dalliance and turns it into a lifelong addiction, so it’s heartening to know that Peggle makes good use of this to serve up bite-sized portions of gameplay that you’ll revisit again and again.

Peggle is obliquely related to pachinko. You fire balls from the top of a screen full of pegs toward a lazily swinging bucket at the bottom. Pegs hit by the wildly bouncing ball are cleared away and converted to points. Score enough points on the way down or land the ball in the bucket, and you’re awarded a bonus ball. Accomplish neither, and you’ll slowly deplete your stock until you fail.

It’s easy to assume that the random element in Peggle that makes the game so durable is the same unpredictable bouncing that keeps pachinko parlors in business. However, that’s only half true. PopCap games doesn’t have a vested interest in getting your money (or rather, they already have it by the time you’re playing), so Peggle‘s maps are simple enough to let you predict the ball’s path. That said, this is definitely a case of easy to learn and hard to master. Neophytes will be able to land the ball near the bucket, but sinking it intentionally takes hours of practice, especially for complex shots.

Not shown: the embarrassing follow-up shot
that hit four pegs and was worth maybe 100 points.

The real replay value is rooted in the game’s goal: clear every orange peg from the field of blue pegs. The trick is that the assignment of which pegs are blue and which are orange is random each time you start. It’s like Left 4 Dead; the overall structure of the game is the same from play to play, but the way the objectives and the foils fit together is always different.

If that isn’t diverse enough, there are also two green pegs and one purple peg on each map. The green pegs activate the special ability of a Peggle master that you select at the top of each round. These abilities usually give you an edge on clearing pegs or collecting points (like a fireball that burns through pegs without bouncing, or a Zen master who nudges your shots so that they score better). The purple peg actually replaces a random blue peg every round and increases the score after it has been struck. It’s a wandering temptation to undermine your strategy for the sake of bonus score, and a boon to Peggle experts looking to make a mark on the leaderboards.

Altogether this means that, although the game has 55 total maps, the three- to six-hour adventure mode that takes you through them all is really the tutorial for the real game. There are a variety of challenges (like levels with more orange pegs, or minimum point thresholds), multiplayer where players alternate turns on a shared map to compete for score, several trophies for achievement-minded gamers, and a quick play mode for times when you have a few spare minutes to Peggle. This is really the way a casual game should be: a wide range of gameplay options for different time constraints and interest levels, and portable to boot.

Custom-fit
The game’s 55 maps and 40 challenges mean that Peggle on the iPhone clocks in at about 80-85% of Peggle Deluxe’s content, but far below Peggle DS, which included everything from Peggle Nights. Popcap has also made a lot of slight tweaks and concessions to eke the most out of the touch interface.

The most visible change is the addition of a scroll wheel on the righthand side of the screen. The touch interface works just as well as mousing for the most part, but when nudging your fat misshapen finger off the screen misaligns your perfect shot, you can fall back on the wheel to fine-tune your aim. This isn’t the same as the ultra-fine targeting with the mouse wheel in Peggle Deluxe. That role is filled by double-tapping the screen, which zooms in and delivers the precision aiming you need to master the game.

The control feels both precise and simple, at least up until you reach for the fire button in the corner and miss it, completely wasting your targeting efforts. For some inscrutable reason, tapping the Fevermeter (the score multiplier bar on the righthand side of the screen) works like tapping the play area. That is, the game interprets it as an aiming command. This problem doesn’t come up very often, but it’s agonizing to be denied the perfect shot by an easily rectified interface quirk.

On the bright side, PopCap has seen fit to add a fast-forward button to speed up the process of arranging the rotating pegs and swinging bucket just so once more. Once you get the hang of this new addition, you’ll wonder why you wasted so much time sitting and waiting for the stars to align in older versions of Peggle.

This title for the bonus round after you clear the last
peg narrowly edged out “Extreme Swine Flu.”

The iPhone’s gorgeous screen does Peggle a lot of favors, and the iPhone port suffers none of the blurriness of its portable counterpart on the DS. There is some visible aliasing if you look carefully, but it’s not obtrusive, and you certainly won’t notice it on the go.

The game’s music has been almost entirely excised, though you can use the iPhone’s music player to queue up your own background music if you like. The loss of Peggle‘s tedious atmospheric music is no great loss, and most players won’t even notice its absence (don’t worry though, Ode to Joy is still in there). The sound effects remain intact whether you’re playing music or not, so the overall experience feels intelligently fit to the iPhone.

There are some minor performance issues in this port, though they’ll be familiar to iPhone veterans. Memory management isn’t one of the device’s strong suits, and players looking for multi-hour play sessions will suffer a few memory crashes. However, Peggle saves your performance after each 3 minute level, so these occasional crashes are unlikely to be devastating. More problematic is the fact that marathon gaming can introduce a bit of lag between tapping the fire button and the shot itself, which can be a dealbreaker when it happens midway through a tricky map.

Pegged
Despite some trivial quirks, Peggle on the iPhone is arguably the best way to get your candy-coated mix of billiards and Breakout. The incredible portability, accessibility, and gameplay depth completely outweigh the small amount of lost content and performance issues. Go get it unless you hate puzzle games.

What It Costs: $5

What It’s Worth:
•To The Hardcore: $15
•To The Genre Fan: $25
•To The Casual: $20