A casual approach to hardcore

Apr 22nd 2008 at 15:25 by Ben Parfitt

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I won't try to answer that here - you probably all have your own ideas as to the answer to that one.

When you stop to think about it, even the most ardent gamer dabbles in casual gaming from time to time. I play Wii and download the odd bit from Xbox Live Arcade and PSN. Though I don’t think you can label all DLC as casual – Pain and Flow perhaps, but Ikaruga and Rez?

But one unquestionably casual game I’ve got involved with recently is Peggle. After winning in to the iPod generation after captaining my team to a triumphant victory at the annual quiz in December’s Intent Media Christmas party and securing myself a shiny 8GB Nano, I recently set about exploring iTunes for various odds and sods to see what the device is capable of.

And aside from a few games-related podcasts and an episode of Peep Show, I also stumbled across the games section. Though much of it was not recognisable to me, the name Peggle rang a few bells, so I opted for that. And, I must admit, it’s one hell of a game.

Without wishing to sound like a rose-tinted, elitist idiot harking one about days gone by when gaming was pure and unsullied by concepts such as ‘sand-box environments’, ‘realistic physics’ and ‘integrated online communities’, Peggle does remind me of the times when gaming was simply about just that – playing a game. Whether that was trying to notch 100,000 in Tetris to catch a glimpse of the rocket, or blitzing Super Mario Bros in under five minutes using the warp zones.

For those of you who don’t know Peggle, like many classics its premise is simple – shoot little balls at little pegs until all of the orange ones have vanished. Pegs disappear when you hit them. You only have a limited number of balls, and there are lots of blue pegs littering the level that get in your way. As you progress through the surprisingly lengthy and varied adventure mode, you encounter loads of different level layouts and an assortment of power ups. And lots of rainbows and unicorns.

Fairly quickly I’d got to the stage where I couldn’t put the thing down. Whether I was outside having a fag, on the loo, in bed, eating breakfast – Peggle was with me.

Simplicity isn’t the only key to the game’s brilliance, though – it’s also the fact that the title is ideally suited to the iPod’s click wheel. Running your thumb across the input determines your aim, and clicking the central button shoots. Perfect. And despite being relatively basic, the convincing and consistent physics mean you can engineer some hugely satisfying skill shots, bouncing your ball of one or even two pegs to get those harder to reach goals.

Still, I was surprised to discover that whilst the purity of the experience appealed to my sensibilities, it was also the main thing that alienated it from my girlfriend. When asked what the “point of it” was, saying that the point was simply the act of playing didn’t get a warm reception. For her, casual gaming is about thinking things through, puzzles, numbers and stuff – can’t get her off Sudoku or Maths Training on the DS at the moment. And you should see her playing Mine Sweeper – it’s mental. It’s like watching Commander Data entering a 1025 digit security code on the comms panel on the Enterprise. Different strokes for different folks, I suppose.