Peggle 2

The goal of Peggle 2 is to clear all 25 orange pegs from the board with 10 balls to shoot from with a cannon at the top of the screen. 72 blue pegs, two green pegs and one purple peg which moves on each shot are randomly placed on the board. With the green peg, it enables the "masters'" power on next shot or even on current shot. The game uses a multiplier feature which multiplies the players score by the number of pegs that the player hits.

The more orange pegs are hit, the higher the multiplier (stylized as "multiplizer" in-game), the more points are earned. The multiplizer starts at "x1" and will go to "x2", "x3", "x5", and lastly "x10". Orange pegs are worth 10x the points of blue pegs, and purples are 50x the worth of blue pegs.

Created by PopCap Games out of studio director Sukhbir Sidhu's love for pachinko machines, Peggle was first released on February 27, 2007, on PC. While originally selling poorly, sales of the game skyrocketed following the inclusion of Peggle Extreme on the video game software The Orange Box (2007), and it went on to garner 50 million downloads by 2009. Peggle was also critically acclaimed, later had versions on other platforms such as Xbox Live Arcade and iOS that were also commercial hits, and was nominated for several Game Developers Choice Awards and Interactive Achievement Award.

More than a year later, PopCap released what was marketed as a follow-up to Peggle (2007), Peggle Nights (2008). While critically acclaimed and featuring new levels and additional mechanics, most of the gameplay and presentation remained the same, a fact that garnered mixed responses from critics and made a Gamezebo reviewer categorize it as "more like an expansion pack." According to a Polygon feature about the making of Peggle 2, it was incredibly difficult to make a good Peggle sequel due to having to produce a new product while keeping the original's "secret sauce."

In general, critics positively covered Peggle 2 but criticized its lack of significantly new aspects, with Game Informer journalist Andrew Reiner describing it as "more like a level pack than a true sequel". In terms of gameplay, IGN critic Ryan Caffrey found it just as good as the previous Peggle games but was a bit dismayed with the levels not having as many "crazy gimmicks and wild themes". In a favorable review, Game Revolution found Peggle 2 the wrong type of game for its console-launch price: "Replaying boards over and over again for the perfect score or binging through the entire campaign of puzzles in one sitting can leave you feeling numb to PopCap's incessant celebration." Eurogamer's Christian Donlan and GameZone's Mike Splechta noted frame-rate issues, Splechta also panning the game's Kinect mode which was criticized for being "rather pointless".

The board challenges and trial levels were praised for their difficulty and adding replay value and variety to Peggle 2. Game Revolution stated it made the game "an excellent chaser for Xbox One's more hardcore experiences", and Edge found the trial levels "a delightful change of pace: you know there's a solution, that what it tells you to do is possible, and as such they require a lot more thought than the fire-and-forget nature of traditional Peggle". The multiplayer mode was well-received but also faulted by reviewers for its sparsity, lagging issues, and (most commonly) not allowing local play. Caffrey disliked the removal of the two-player Duel mode of the previous games, and Reiner criticized the multiplayer mode for occasionally dropping the player in the middle of online rounds where he's "forced to play the majority of the game in a losing position until a new one starts".