QCF: Peggle 2

he science of a sequel is a tricky one; delivering too much of the same results in recycled content that’s poised to lose the pop of its series signature assets—deviating too far from the set formula with new features or style though risks a game into becoming something that fans may not even recognize with the intended brand.

Finding the right balance when developing the follow-up to an established success are the necessary pains within their ass that the developers undergo to ensure that the next entry in the line is a worthy one to the name—Popcap approaches Peggle 2 with the right attitude, but the final effort barely nails the follow-through on the ideal. Which isn’t necessarily bad, but it isn’t exactly an improvement either.

Banking on the infinite simplistic accessibility that’s fueled with instantaneous appeal , it would difficult (to say the least) to expand on Peggle, as one wrong change could easily endanger that crucial hook; Popcap played it safe, but almost a little too safe.

Being fair, there’s one distinct quality where Popcap went all out on the craziest way they could, and that’s the overall pageantry of Peggle. Taking advantage of the Xbox One, all of the animations are vibrant and animated into equisitely charming frames of hilarity and cartoon tom-foolery that gives the franchise way more personality than it ever had before. The familiar tropes of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy blasting the moment you clear the last peg and the respective master responding in celebration is dramatized to entirely new levels that bring out the charm of looking at and hearing Peggle 2 feel genuinely more satisfying then it ever has before.

To continue giving credit where credit’s due, the complexity of the Peggle formations and the obstacles that accompany of them is far more enriched in arrangement and challenge than it’s predecessor. The setups that gradually change with every level you advance focus on heightening two specific elements in ways that the original Peggle was not nearly as conscious with; utilizing every Peggle Master ability encountered and then pushing that dynamic in ways that trump the last challenge and any expectation going into the level for that matter.

If you’re not familiar with Peggle, it The Price Is Right’s Plinko meets vertical bowling only sillier. Armed with ten shots, gameplay revolves around shooting balls into a board of colored pegs with the objective of clearing out all of the orange pegs on the board before you run out of shots—where that sounds like the gist of it, there lays several conditions that can occur during play to shake up the formula. Certain shapes of Peggles have different kinetic properties in their physics when reacting to the impact of the shot ball, and some of them add specific effects to the round, this is where Peggle 2 shows off that extra bit of polish you’d expect from a sequel.

Aside from the blue and orange, there are purple and green pegs, the purple pegs are score multipliers, which become more and more significant when playing through the stages because when used just right, they’ll earn you extra balls to help towards finishing the level. The other modifier is the most critical towards your odds of winning—the ability pegs, this is where Peggle (and the most notable upgrade in Peggle 2) really get its character.

Different chapters that make up for the cluster of levels conquered are headed by an avatar known as a Peggle Master, and other than the return of the series mascot Bjorn the Unicorn, there are four brand new ones that introduce completely different talents to the fold. These skills become invaluable when reaching the end of that Master’s particular gauntlet of levels as placement of orange pegs and the surrounding one all around it get more and more devious to clear, requiring tactful use of the Master’s specific power.

While the powers themselves are one-dimensional in execution, the diversity and caveats laid around the spots where you’ll need to breach the goal pegs are ingeniously clever. Jeffery the troll for example has the power to summon a giant rock, a huge one, and when launched, it can take out the most fortified areas of the board, hardly leaving any peg behind, it just tears shit up. It’s in these little quirks that Peggle 2 will keep thumbs moving on the controller, and some of the powers are especially brilliant when applied against certain peg placements (Luna the ghost transparency effect on Blue pegs easily makes her section the most tense.) The real shame here however, is that there’s only so much that these new powers and their improved harmony within the levels can add before Peggle 2 boils down to more Peggle.

Don’t get me wrong, the refinement in the core structure doesn’t go unnoticed, but when the potential for new dynamics to change up the flow is completely absent, it’s only a matter of time before the enchantment of the sequel wears thin for players who aren’t hardcore fans of the series. To name a few suggestions, changes like multi-tiered boards constructed with more depth and real estate to them for example or new pegs that offer completely different modifiers would have been a really nice twist that would have actually helped Peggle 2 feel like it was something…new.

Where the scale of innovation is tepid at best, the content that is new is not only fresh, but also polished to an entirely new degree, and helps Peggle reach new degrees of cerebral play while still holding on to that dumb-game magic that makes it so good to begin with. You can definitely do worse on the Xbox One so if you’re curious about revisiting the land of bumping spheres then rest assured that it’s work your download, as long as you don’t expect anything groundbreaking on latest Peggle go-around.