Shameful Pegging

Yahoo! News today had a headline about Bejeweled's 10th anniversary being 'celebrated' as of this writing... and the ONE guy who has managed to beat the game.

http://videogames.yahoo.com/events/plugged-in/five-things-you-didn-t-know-about-bejeweled-/1405499

Now if you've read any of this blog you know I have a love/hate relationship with Bejeweled 2 for the Xbox 360. I find it as compelling as the bazillion other people that play it do... there's a copy sold every 4.3 seconds... but there's something that misfires between my brain and the strategy needed to do well at the game.

I shouldn't care. This game is the casual game of casual games. Grannies and babies play this game. The hardcore gamer card in my wallet heats up and starts to smell like diarrhea every time I start Bejeweled 2 up. At least that's what I'd  tell anyone in the same room with me. Squeezing some off under stress? Not me! Nooooooooo.

Anyway. Sucking at Bejeweled has me under an ongoing questioning about my abilities at strategy or puzzle games in general. I've never been a big puzzle game gay-- I mean guy-- in the first place (not that there's anything wrong with that), but I like to RELAX with a not-too-taxing easy matching game or somesuch just like a lot of people. Except that Bejeweled is not fucking relaxing. NOT TO ME!

So I finally managed to give the damn thing a rest for a while. I think the monotony of the music and the announcer eventually helped me kick it where my frustration at massive suckage was unable to.

Maybe two months ago on Waxing Erratic I gave ECM some crap about liking casual games (a joke... even though he does like casual games. Maybe likes 'em too much) and he then reeled off a litany of other games for which he probably has to hide out from the hardcore police. One of them was Peggle.

Now if you are a Peggle player you know this game is at least as addicting as Bejeweled if not more so. But it is from THE SAME COMPANY. I'd heard a few people say it was their favorite 'puzzler'... but a lot of people say Bejeweled is their favorite and like, FUCK those people! So when I downloaded the demo for Peggle and the PopCap logo came out I fweeped a smelly... I mean my hardcore card began to heat up again... and I almost deleted it on the spot.

As it turns out, ECM has pretty good taste in secret shames. This game requires skill of a different order than Bejeweled, and for some reason I can get my head around it. It is more action-oriented in that you shoot a little ball to hit and clear glowing pegs. So the game combines some eye-hand ability along with strategy in how and when to use special powers or go for bonus points. I had pretty good luck playing World of Goo because the puzzles were grounded in consistent virtual physics. Peggle is the same. It doesn't hurt that the game has a fair amount in common with pachinko, for which I own two real machines. A lot of people probably wouldn't even call Peggle a puzzle game, I suppose.

I like this game enough to wear I'm really dividing time between this and Okami. I haven't put it up as currently played in the sidebar or my Backloggery because, y'know, I have my rep to maintain. But in reality I've almost beaten every challenge in every mode of Peggle and I even have a decent win/loss record starting up with online versus games. As I have lots of other games to get to and have only a few challenges left to complete I will probably wind down my time on this game.

That is if I can summon up the supreme act of will and NOT buy that Peggle Nights expansion pack. Either way, Peggle has been sublime considering it comes from the same company that packages rough prison sex as a sweet little pastime about matching colored jewels.