Peggle Dual Shot
Ages: Everyone

This nicely crafted game is a kinda-sorta Pachinko machine, except that it isn't quite one. At the start of a level, you are presented with an arrangement of pegs and in later levels, pegs and bricks. Most of them are blue, but there are 25 orange pegs and/or bricks on the screen. You have a ball shooter at the top of the screen, and tapping it ejects a ball into play. The physics of the game are very good, and the ball bounces off pegs and bricks as it drops to the bottom, behaving very much as you would expect a metal ball to act when it hits metal pegs (and making very satisfactory boinging sounds as it goes). If the bricks form a wall or barrier, the ball may roll along it when it loses enough energy so that it can't quite bounce. When the ball finally makes it to the bottom of the screen, all the pegs and bricks that have been hit or touched by the ball vanish - thus enabling you to hit those that were positioned behind or under others.

The objectives of the game are twofold - first, you must hit all 25 orange pieces before you run out of balls, and second you may try to rack up as high a score as you can. Although you start out with 10 balls, there are several situations that can give you extra balls. There is a 'ball bucket' that moves back and forth across the bottom of the screen, and if your ball lands in it, rather than just falling through the bottom of the screen, you will be rewarded with a free extra ball. There are a few pegs or bricks of different colors - purple and green, which can multiply the points you get for hitting the pegs and bricks and can also result in extra balls being awarded.

Aiming the shooter can be done in several ways, including dragging the dotted line that shows the trajectory to be expected. You have all the time you want to aim the shooter - when you are satisfied, touch the red ball in the shooter to eject the ball. To advance to the next level you must clear the screen of all the orange pieces, and to do so requires a combination of skill and luck, but in all the levels that I have played it is not impossible.

At higher levels, the arrangements of the pegs and bricks can become more elaborate - rotating wheels of pegs, sinuous arrangements of bricks, sliding barriers that the ball will just bounce off if hit. When you finally shoot the ball so that it will hit the last orange piece, the screen goes into slow motion, fireworks appear and Beethoven's ninth symphony comes out of the loudspeaker. Finishing a level will unlock that level for free play, so that you can come back to get a higher score or just to figure out how to beat it more efficiently. I do wish there were some additional triumphal blasts besides the Beethoven though.

The controls and graphics work very well on the DS, so that this is a very satisfying game to have in your pocket when you want to relax for 5 or 10 minutes. You can also play with another DS owner in Single Card Download Mode.

Fun Factor: Quick and satisfying
Player Friendly: Good Instruction Manual Included

Reviewed by: Lou - 06/09