Peggle: Nights

The Good
The game reminds me a lot off pinball except with a few rules changed, the idea is that you launch balls into a field full of pegs and if the ball hits the peg it will disappear, once all the red pegs are gone you win the game. You do have a limited amount of balls which was nicely balanced to still provide a decent challenge, so you will have to think about where to shoot them at.

There are also blue, green and purple pegs to fill the field a little more and frustrate you whenever they are blocking the last red peg. The green one activates a special ability that changes depending on the level you are in, there were simple one that split the ball into two, but there were also cool ones that made the ball reappear at the top of the screen. The purple one gives you bonus points and the blue ones are just simple obstacles that yield a few extra points when taken down.

The backgrounds were different for each stage and some of them were actually pretty pleasing to look at, especially during the pumpkin stage. The pumpkin wants to be an artist, so we get to see a lot of detailed paintings behind the game. It's also pretty swell that the pegs don't blend in with the background, so you are never surprised by a blue peg hiding somewhere in that water.

I should probably clarify why I am not going to complaint about this game charging money for something you can play online for free (flash games on game sites) like I did in my Angry Birds review. The difference is that I actually like Pop Cap and their attitude isn't as rotten as Rovio's. They just make games the way they like and when they do make the headlines on the Escapist they seem to have decent amount of humor. Rovio on the other hand just farms ideas until they turn gray and die while complaining about how companies like Nintendo aren't producing anything good.

The Bad
The game is mostly centered around luck instead of skill, the problem is that it's nearly impossible to predict what a ball is going to do after maybe the first two ricochets unless you are math teacher on a university or something. Likewise, most of the times I made an amazing combo it was just because the ball got launched somewhere great after the second peg.

The cute animal mascots were kind off annoying because they feel really kiddie and the way they talk just makes me want to shove a care-bear down their throats. The very first character was a unicorn which is a nice way to get rid off all the little boys who thought this might be an interesting game. Overall it's just a very poor feature that the game could have done perfectly without and switching to another every five stages is just too fast and leaves us with a whole lot of characters that we don't care about in the slightest.

The game doesn't really offer much variety in terms of gameplay, we see a lot of different characters, a lot of different areas, but all we ever do is flinging stones at colored targets. The difficulty curve is nowhere to be found. Plants vs. Zombies also only has one gameplay mechanic, you place plants to fight off zombies, but there is a difficulty curve and you unlock new and interesting plants to help you out, but Peggle doesn't do any of that.

The Bottom Line
Peggle Nights is certainly entertaining when played in small bits, but the problem is that it's not aimed at me. If I like it or not is in no way a guarantee that the people it's meant for will like it. It's not like games like Mario Kart 64 where the game is also fun for teens and adults, it's just a game for kids and an adult playing it in public would be rather scary to see.

One way or another, I had fun with Peggle Nights and it's worth playing every now and then. Young girls will probably enjoy this the most due to the cute animal mascots and the style they are drawn in, but everybody else will probably have to buy and play it at night when nobody is looking.