Peggle Blast

Look, I love Peggle. I played the PC version growing up, and I was so hyped to have it on mobile, too. Yeah, it’s not the same as the PC version, but it’s still fun…until you get the glitches. I’ve played this game in full on mobile before and had no issues, but I just redownloaded the app and started completely fresh. Was doing great, having fun, but there were two levels right at the very beginning that wouldn’t count all the orange pegs I hit. One was an arbitrary level where you start by using your first level help with extra green pegs, which was easy enough to get past if I just ignored the urge to get as many orange pegs in one shot. It said to hit 25 orange pegs, and I had several retries where I cleared the entire board but it wouldn’t let me move on because it refused to count all 25 orange pegs that I hit. Again, I got past it by going slower and hitting fewer in one move. Unfortunately, the level where you’re encouraged to do a slide move (the spiral formation) gave me the same issue. No matter how many times I restarted the level and tried to fire to get no slide or as few orange pegs in one move, it would not count all 25 orange pegs I hit. Again, I cleared the board several times, and nothing worked. This ultimately made me delete the app entirely. I couldn’t care less about in-game purchases or whatever else, but good GOD this game is literally unplayable with the glitches. Hopefully they fix this crap.

The game itself is quite fun and feels like a proper Peggle game. However, it is very clearly designed to rope you in and then squeeze money out of you. In the beginning, the only real issue is that you only have 5 lives which regenerate after a certain time period. For the most part this is fine, although it can be a little aggravating when it comes to levels that involve a lot of luck and/or random elements. Other than that, the microtransactions don’t feel too forced and you only have to watch ads if you want to earn extra power ups or lives. However, at around level 45, this suddenly changes. I sincerely hope this is a bug, but after *every single level*, you have to watch an ad. If you fail, you still have to watch an ad. Sometimes if you cancel instead of retrying, you get another ad. And in further levels, you sometimes get ads when *starting* levels. It’s ridiculous. And they don’t even offer a one-time payment to get rid of the ads?? I would gladly pay $5 to get rid of the ads as it is an otherwise fun game, but I just can’t keep playing at this point because the stereotypical low-effort mobile game ads are way too frequent. I’m so tired of seeing good games be ruined by corporate greed, so please do not spend a single cent on this game.

I LOVE Peggle. I bought the app (which they removed and I can’t get anymore) I also bought it on Xbox. It’s a great game. This new game is still fun but it’s clearly designed for you to lose repeatedly unless you constantly give them money. I’m on level 65 and it’s to the point now where one level takes me 20+ tries since I REFUSE to give Popcap any money. It disgusts me that I even give them add money between plays. I would have gladly paid $10 for a good Peggle game that didn’t try to nickel and dime me. I would love someone smarter than me to analyze the levels and see your statistical chances of beating it without paying money. You’ve got frozen pegs, too covered pegs by little gnomes that move around until you eliminate them, bombs that must be hit in 5 tries or you’re done. I just played a level with 5 bombs (5 chances total to hit them all without losing instantly), ice covered pegs that take 3 hits to clear them, 3 jerk gnomes moving around to cover pegs in black goo that take two hits to eliminate. Popcap, you can make a challenging game, but this is a blatant cash grab. It’s no longer fun last a certain level. It’s an awful grind and you end up just paying to beat levels. What’s the most upsetting thing is you purposely stopped updating Peggle ($4.99 purchase) so paying customers can’t download it again. The App Store is getting too full of these games that are micro transaction hell. What once was an place of innovating games is now a mess of “Free” games that cost 10-20x more than just paying for a game outright.