While luck does play a substantial part in the addictiveness of Peggle, that’s not to say there’s no skill involved; a quick comparison of your initial scores and the leaderboard will affirm to that. Firstly, there’s an array of cutesy characters all with their own unique power-up ability that subtly changes your approach to each level, and the chances of you landing that ever elusive single shot clearance – yes, it is possible. There’s Claude the Lobster who grants you a pair of pinball flippers on the lower sides of the screen, Kat Tut the Cat who transforms the ball bucket into a much more ball friendly pyramid and Lord Cinterbottom the Dragon who, well, I’ll leave that for you to discover.

It’s not only the array of abilities that add to the Peggle experience. Score a particularly high score on a single shot and Jimmy Lightning the Beaver will raise his head and exclaim his delight in the form of some Keanu Reeves Point Break inspired witticism. It’s cheesy, but delightfully so and the same can be said for the array of sound effects that accompany every bump, rattle and roll.

It conjures up memories of those arcade games of old. The ones that weren’t afraid to completely embrace tongue in cheek humour and the notion of easygoing fun, the ones with no pretensions towards any kind of unnecessary depth and the ones with no concept of that redundant ‘hardcore’ gaming concept.

That’s not to say that Peggle is without its faults. The party mode, designed to stir up some healthy competition between you and your LIVE buddies, feels half-baked and uninspired. Each player is confined to their own separate screen with the simple objective of beating the others’ score. It’s a rare example within Peggle where embracing the beauty of simplicity fails to reward the player. PopCap would have been much better off designing a mode where players could have made strategic moves to sully the others’ game plan.

There is, however, a substantial leaderboard wherein you can swiftly indentify that you’re not quite as talented on the world stage as you’d previously expected, while PopCap has also included a video function where you can view the high rollers best shots in all their glory.

At the end of the day, you’ve not succumbed to the addiction because of a handful of leaderboard features and replay videos. Peggle is a rare, but clear example of a game that utilises a simple concept to create a limitlessly satisfying gameplay experience. There are no end of level bosses, ostentatious cut scenes or superfluous button layouts to memorise, Peggle is simply gameplay refined.

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