Review: Peggle Nights (Xbox 360, PS3)
December 6th, 2009 | Written by Chris Selogy | Topic: PlayStation 3, Reviews, Xbox 360
With Peggle’s release on PSN recently, PopCap Games finally dropped the Peggle Nights expansion on both PSN and XBLA to let players add more levels to their games. Peggle Nights features an interesting take on the adventure mode along with more challenges to test your skills even further.
To take a quick detour, the reason this isn’t a review of the PSN version of Peggle is that it’s the same game as the XBLA version. The only new features is the ability to upload great replays to YouTube and the ability to play the game on the PSP via Remote Play, which are nice bonuses for this version for those that can make use of them. If you’d like to read more on what to expect from the full game, check out our review of the XBLA version here.
Back to Peggle Nights, the adventure mode takes a bit of a different approach than what is offered in the main game. Each of the Peggle Masters turns into their dream versions of themselves, which ranges from rock star to fireman to artist. The whole campaign is similar in length as it is in the main game, though there is an additional Master, a lady squid with a lightning power, to add an additional set of levels to the campaign. It would have been nice to see a twist on the Masters’ powers rather than just a change in the backdrops of the levels. These levels are also added to the Master Duel and multiplayer modes, so there are more ways to experience those levels in whatever mode you want to play.
The challenge mode in the Peggle Nights add-on features 60 new challenges that require a lot more skill to beat most of them with some of the interesting challenges you’re given. If you remember the main game’s challenge mode, a lot of the earlier missions just added more orange pegs to normal levels before you got unique requests to clear all of the pegs in a level or beat levels with a limit on balls. In Nights’ challenge mode, it features fewer easy challenges and more that feature unique requests that will be hard for anyone that’s not a master of Peggle.
The levels in Peggle Nights really aren’t going to look any better than what you see in the main game, though some of the settings do have good backdrops. The level design in Nights seems a bit more centered around laying the bricks along edges on the background that includes some stationary bumpers that aren’t always easy to notice the first time you play those levels. Even the annoying tactic of stacking a lot of bricks on top of each other in large blocks feels like a cheap tactic since you have to shoot at it more to get to the green bricks inside it. The music continues the pleasant trend that you heard in the main game.
Regardless of whatever system you have Peggle on, Peggle Nights is a good purchase for the $5 it costs on XBLA and PSN if you need more levels for Peggle. The new levels for the adventure mode and multiplayer will add more visual variety to those modes, though the new challenges are designed much more for Peggle veterans. If you have yet to buy Peggle on either digital download service, there’s no better time than now to get it.
Final Score: 8.3 | Recommendation: Buy It
