Peggle Dual Shot (DS)

I picked up Peggle Dual Shot from Real Canadian SuperStore for $14.99 a few days ago... gotta love how they use the DS initials in the game title.... err, yeah mebbe not......

Anyway, it's a pretty casual but addicting puzzle game. I've been playing it a lot over the last few days.

I'd never played Peggle before, but I know there are prior iterations for iPhone(?) and PC. The DS version is developed by Q? Entertainment, the makers of Lumines for the PSP (and Xbox Live)... but I suspect that the presentation & feel of the game is very much from the original, PopCap games.

The goal of the game is to shoot a ball down a peg filled screen, and try to get all the orange pegs before you run out of ammo. You can use the buttons, but the preferred controls are completely stylus. Swiping the stylus side to side turns the cannon, and pressing on the center of the cannon fires it. For the most part, the control scheme works well, but there are times when I tap the fire button only to find it suddenly turned the cannon, wrecking my shot.... that's annoying. And it's very hard to predict how a shot will bounce, so there's still a lot of chance & blind luck involved with the game, which can be a frustration.

But most of my issues with the game are small ones. This may seem nit-picky, but the look & presentation is pretty cheesy. I'm sure some of it's intentional-- when you hit the final peg, I'll just say that the game makes a big deal out of it, hehe. It's pretty funny. But the character designs are pretty bad, and their text dialogue is corny. It's also annoying that it drops the text down over the gameplay screen when you just want to get in and play.

The overall gameplay is very simple and there are a few modes, but it's still a very basic game that's worth a budget price.

GameSpot Peggle Dual Shot gameplay video:





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