WaruiReview: Peggle Extreme

[Jango]

Intro: I entirely blame this one on PC Gamers. Seeing how much good press The Orange Box has gotten, about a month ago I finally folded and bought it. Unfortunately, due to my internet sucking, I couldn't get Team Fortress 2 to connect to any servers, but Portal was awesome and Half-Life 2 was kinda cool when you weren't driving in really badly controlled vehicles (may review in the future at some point in time). However, there's one game that you won't hear people talking about when you mention The Orange Box, and that is Peggle Extreme. Now Peggle Extreme is the black sheep of the group because, unlike the others, instead of being a first person shooter, it's... a puzzle game. But is it any fun?! Let's find out!



Gameplay: The official advertisement on Steam states that it's like a cross between pachinko and pinball. I'd just like to point out that this is a flat-out lie. The way the game works is that you have a ball launcher at the top of the screen (ORIGINAL) and have to aim and shoot at colored balls/blocks, your main goal being to clear the screen of all red blocks. Blue blocks are basically good for nothing except getting points, green blocks give you a power-up (in this version, an aiming aide), and purple blocks give you a large amount of point. You have 10 shots to clear each screen, although you can get extra balls by gathering enough points onscreen to get an extra ball and/or getting your ball to land in the little... tub thing on the bottom, I seriously can't tell what that is. After you clear the red blocks, you go into a "Frenzy Mode" where everything you hit has a large point value, ending when your ball falls into a point zone in the bottom, after which your score is calculated.

Just to say something about the gameplay, it's decent. There's nothing terribly wrong about it, there's nothing outstandingly well-done about it, it's just playable. My only complaint is that sometimes, the ball's physics doesn't seem to move as it should.

Sound: The initial loading screen should be a telltale sign that production values for the soundtrack aren't great at all. You have two classical pieces here (Including the now cliché Ode to Joy by Beethoven), and then a bunch of elevator music for when you solve puzzles. Nothing really wrong with the latter, but it's repetitive and gets very boring after a while. The game sound effects aren't much better. You either get a lot of generic stock sounds for whatever happens on screen, or canned "boos" if you miss the last block, and that's just pitiful. What makes it worse is that the whole selling point of this game was that it incorporated elements from the Orange Box into the game. By incorporated, they mean that for win/gameover screens, they used 2 Half-Life quotes (rather one quote, one "death" sound), 4 TF2 quotes, and 2 Portal quotes. Boy if that isn't representative of what you're trying to advertise, I don't know what is!

Length: There are 10 stages. As long as you don't suck, you can probably beat this game in about 25 minutes tops. That's not surprising considering... wait what? This game is a trial version? I spent $50 on this thing, and one of the games is a mere trial version to get me to buy a full version?! SON OF A FUCKING BITCH.

Rehash Factor: It might grab you for a little while, but there's really no incentive to keep playing it. You'll probably stop playing after about a week.

Plot: The game starts you off with the unicorn (that's not a good sign) Bjorn, the leader of the Peggle Masters, telling all "personnel" that "horrible creatures" (I'm assuming they're headcrabs and/or the other aliens from Half-Life 2) are invading the "Institute," and that you can apparently stop them by playing Peggle. As the game goes on, you run into the TF2 guys, and Bjorn has the bright idea to use the Engineer's Turrets to stop the aliens. This apparently doesn't work, however, because the forces have to retreat to Apecture Science and hide in the closet, hoping that the portals in the institute can help them defeat the enemies. Once you beat the game, you get a lame congratulations screen and a small trailer for the full version, which really doesn't look that exciting.

Okay, first of all, if Bjorn is issuing commands and giving you advice throughout the game, why are you playing as him? Also where are the turrets? I'm playing the TF2 levels and I don't see any turrets shooting stuff! You were able to throw in portals for the Portal levels, why skimp on TF2? You know what, fuck this. I can't believe I'm trying to analyze a storyline for a trial version of a game.

Difficulty: No, not really. You might have a hard time with some of the Portal levels, but other than that, it's pretty easy.

Final Score: 5/10
This game is nothing more than a generic flash game that features Orange Box characters in the background, a few quotes, and one interesting feature in the last three levels. Not exactly the best way to get people to buy the full version. Here's the best part of it:

[Insanius]

I haven't seen a screen that good since beating Episode 3 of DOOM!