Peggle Xbox 360 XBLA review

If Xbox 360 owners thought they were safe from the dangerous addiction of Peggle then they ought to think again. You won’t find any new additions to the best selling PC title, but you will become mercilessly cross-eyed once again as the colours and sounds suck you into a marathon session of pinball-style action.

The basic mechanics of Peggle revolve around blue and orange pegs. Using the analogue stick the trick is to aim your ball at the orange pegs. The surrounding blue pegs will help drive up your points score and a couple of green pegs in each level provide power-ups such as pinball-like flippers to keep your ball from premature bucket-death or a double ball extravaganza to notch up your score. And that’s it, really. The simplistic nature of Peggle makes it irresistibly easy to pick up and play without fear of over complex controls. The soundtrack is funky and the characters you meet during each stage are equally as colourful.

If you enjoy playing for achievements then you’ll rub your hands with glee at the challenges offered in exchange of those precious gamerpoints. Some are relatively easy to achieve while others will have you (and your thumbs) breaking out in a frustrated sweat. A fair few are, some argue, purely down to good timing and chance. In fact, most of the time those amazing high scoring shots are purely down to coincidence, though it is possible to aim and time wisely to knock out a plethora of tricky blocks.

If there’s one down side to Peggle then it’s more to do with the Xbox controller than the game itself. Fiddling with an analogue stick is just not as accurate as using a mouse, but in all honesty, it does nothing to lessen enjoyment.

Once you’ve completed the main adventure mode the action continues with specific targets to reach that will really test true fanatics. You can even challenge friends or participants on Live if you fancy flaunting your fantastic skills (or just being plain lucky).

In all honesty, this game doesn’t really need my seal of approval – the award-winning title has a huge fanbase and with its expansion to various consoles, its popularity will no doubt continue to grow. Priced at a mere 800 Microsoft points, you’d be foolish not to succumb to the temptation of ‘just one more level’.