It's not often that I enjoy a "casual" game. Call me snobbish, but I usually like my games to contain plenty of depth. Still, I'll occasionally make an exception. Wii Sports Resort managed to impress me with its gameplay variety, and most recently, Peggle grabbed my attention with its Pinball-like mechanics. What's amazing about Peggle is that it's easy enough to figure out in a minute, yet it contains enough of a challenge for a video game veteran.

How Peggle works is simple: A cannon hanging from the top of the screen shoots a miniature pinball in the direction of your choice at a constant velocity. Your goal is to clear the screen of orange pegs and bricks that are located in various parts of the screen by hitting them with your pinball. However, this is not as easy as it sounds. The screen is cluttered with blue pegs organized in a variety of patterns, so accessing the orange pegs can be difficult.

Besides blue and orange pegs, there are also green and purple pegs. Green pegs allow you to use special abilities that you're granted in each world of the campaign. These abilities range from Zen shots that will improve your accuracy to multi-balls that will put an additional ball into play to help players reach those elusive orange bricks. The purple pegs aren't as exciting, but they'll add to your point multiplier (which is important for earning extra balls). You only get ten balls for each round, so it's important to earn as many points as possible and make use of the mobile ball catcher that will replace your ball.

The Bottom Line:

Peggle may have basic visuals and sound effects, but its simplistic, yet strategic gameplay and wealth of courses make it a casual game worth owning.

Score: 8.0