Let's talk about some classic PopCap games
Casuals welcome.
When it’s on sale, one of the best Steam bundles I can recommend for just about everyone is the PopCap Party Pack. It contains four of everyone’s favorite PopCap games: Bejeweled 3, Peggle Deluxe, Plants vs. Zombies, and Zuma Deluxe, as well as Chuzzle Deluxe, which if you’re like me, you’ve previously never heard of. They’re all fun titles, so I’d like to share my thoughts on them and perhaps convince you to check them out.
Before PopCap became more of a mobile developer, they were all about the casual PC market. If you’ve somehow never heard of any of the aforementioned games, I guarantee your mom probably has. Even if someone doesn’t really like video games, they probably like at least one PopCap game, and for good reason: they’re easy to pick up, easy to run on a computer, and easy to enjoy. Anyone could play these.
I initially wanted to rank every game in this bundle, but I realized while attempting to rank Peggle, Bejeweled, and Zuma that it largely came down to preference. I think Plants vs. Zombies is the best and Chuzzle is the weakest, but honestly every game in here is of solid quality. Ranking these five games would be like ranking the Harry Potter movies: maybe Goblet of Fire is a little bit better than Chamber of Secrets, but it’s not as if one is significantly superior to the other, and your favorite probably comes down to preference rather than some sort of objective quality. (Although Prisoner of Azkaban? Easily the best one.) Anyway, let’s talk about some casual games.
Chuzzle Deluxe
I imagine many people have never heard of this one before, but not because it’s not a game worth knowing about- it just slipped under the radar. Like Bejeweled, it’s a match-three game, but instead of swapping gems into lines of three you move entire rows to form groups. It feels really odd at first, like trying to write with your non-dominant hand, but once you acclimate your mind to Chuzzle’s ways, it is quite enjoyable. In fact, I even had a bit of trouble getting used to Bejeweled again after playing Chuzzle for a bit.
Despite steep competition from fellow PopCap games, Chuzzle is by far the weirdest. The Chuzzles seem to take pleasure in the fact that you’re going to pop them, always staring at your mouse cursor in anticipation. They shake in excitement when they’re about to be popped and cheer when they finally are. Cheers and grunts aren’t the only thing your ears are blessed with: you also get to hear some totally groovy music. Does Chuzzle do anything better than Bejeweled? Eh, I don’t know, but I still like Pepsi even if I think Coke is better.
Peggle Deluxe
I find Peggle somewhat difficult to write about because there isn’t much for me to say about it: Peggle is just a fun video game. You shoot balls at crazy pachinko boards and try to clear all the red pegs. Depending on which Peggle Master is at your side, hitting green pegs activates special powers, like pinball flippers or instantly spawning another ball. Unlike real pachinko, which is luck based, Peggle has some skill involved, and like real pachinko, it’s fun to watch the ball bounce from peg to peg as it goes down the screen.
There’s a bunch of little stuff in Peggle that makes you feel good: watching the ball land in the catcher to earn your ball back; earning enough points in one shot to earn a free ball; hitting a long shot and getting a bonus point reward. The Peggle Masters are so charming, too; take a look at them in the screenshot above. The sunflower girl might look a bit off-putting, sure, but look at that beaver wearing a cap and that owl with the turban. That’s a bunny with a magician’s hat! Tell me those aren’t awesome designs— you can’t.
Peggle’s physics are worthy of praise. The ball loses momentum when it rebounds off walls and pegs and slowly loses height with each successive bounce. The ball has weight and suffers the effects of friction, meaning you’ll get frustrated when your ball can’t roll up a hill from a valley of pegs. This means the ball behaves as it should, so there’s no frustration from dishonest physics. Once you get a feel for how the ball moves, you can ricochet it off certain objects to hit distance targets. It feels very rewarding.
Anyway, Peggle is good. If you want to play it right this moment, you can try Peggle Extreme on Steam for free, which is a collection of 10 levels to promote Valve’s The Orange Box. Also, EA and PopCap, if you’re reading this, I think you should release Peggle 2 on PC, because that game is a lot of fun too, and it’s strange that a game that originally launched on PC doesn’t have a PC sequel.
Zuma Deluxe
Zuma is lacking in content, but the core gameplay is so much fun that it doesn’t really matter. You control a frog trying to match three or more colored balls as they slowly parade towards a goal. Clearing certain balls will cause explosions or help your frog with aiming. It’s also set in Mesoamerican inspired locales, so the soundtrack is full of woodwinds, percussion, and chants. Sometimes when you beat a stage, ancient stone statues will warn you not to trespass or investigate the mystery of Zuma any further, to which our frog protagonist replies: “Ribbit.”
As mentioned before, there’s not a whole lot in this game: there’s the main adventure mode (13 stages, most of which have multiple levels) and gauntlet, which is essentially survival mode. Unlike in Bejeweled 3 and Plants vs. Zombies, there isn’t really any variation in how the game is played: the only difference between the two game modes is one ends and the other doesn’t. Still, I think there’s enough level variety to keep the game fresh for a while.
I got into a debate with a coworker about what genre of game this is. Steam will tell you it’s a puzzle game, but to me there’s not really a lot of puzzle-solving going on here. I think Bejeweled meets the criteria because it requires you to think about the best way to solve the board in front of you, but there’s only a little bit of that in Zuma, and most of the time I’m just trying to clear the board as fast as I can. Shoot-em-up might fit, since you’re trying to clear a wave of enemies before they reach a goal, like in Space Invaders, but calling Zuma a shoot-em-up doesn’t seem right either. It’s definitely not a platformer or racing game, and not an adventure game either… I guess by process of elimination, it must be a puzzle game after all. Oh well. Whatever genre of game it is, Zuma is plenty enjoyable, and I defer to my coworker: “that game is LIT!”
Bejeweled 3
Bejeweled was the reason I wanted a Facebook account so badly as a kid. My parents would play the browser based Bejeweled Blitz, where a player is tasked with matching gems to amass as much score as possible in a limited amount of time. Once my parents OK’d the creation of my Facebook account when I was finally old enough, I played Blitz daily. I no longer have a Facebook account, but I do have Bejeweled 3 on my PC, which happens to have a Blitz mode (called Lightning), and it’s just as entertaining.
Blasphemous to my teenage self as it might be to say, Lightning might not even be the best mode in Bejeweled 3; I think that honor goes to Poker. In that game mode, whenever you make a match, that color is added to one of five cards in your hand, and after five matches the best possible hand is made. Unlike in Lightning where you forego strategy for speed, you typically want to go slowly in Poker so you can make the best set of moves possible. The longer you play, the more hands are marked for “sudden death,” meaning if you play one of those hands, the game flips a coin to decide whether to give you a game over. Playing high scoring hands, like Flushes, can reverse the sudden death markings. Flushes are super hard to get. I don’t know how anyone does it consistently. I might be bad at Poker— but I love playing it.
Given that it’s the most recent game in this bundle, it’s probably not too surprising that this is easily the best-looking game of the five (though to be fair its competition is cartoon zombie drawings and Pachinko boards). The gems are bright, solid colors that contrast well against the dark checkered board they rest upon, so for the most part the game’s visual data is easily legible — though I did find there were times when powered gems blended in with similar colors. The game’s visuals as a whole look ethereal, as if we’re peering into a land not of this world- in full 1080p, I might add! It’s nice to have HD.
Bejeweled 3 has a lot to do in it, surprisingly; there’s the core four game modes: Classic, Zen, Lightning, and Quest, and four bonus modes unlocked by playing the game: Poker, Ice Storm, Diamond Mine, and Butterflies. Besides sharing the core match-three gameplay, each mode has something unique to offer, so if you get bored of Poker’s slower pace, you can go play Ice Storm, or if that’s too stressful, you can play Zen. It doesn’t quite match Plants vs. Zombies’ amount of content, but there’s plenty here, and it’s all a very good time.
Plants vs. Zombies
In a bundle featuring 5 great games, I think Plants vs. Zombies is easily the best one, and definitely the one I return to the most. No disrespect to other titles included, they’re certainly no slouches, but PvZ is on another level — this game rocks. If somehow, you’ve never heard of it, Plants vs. Zombies is a tower defense game where you defend your lawn against waves of incoming zombies by filling it with plants. It’s not the hardest game, but it’s silly and charming and a lot of fun.
PvZ’s adventure mode does a great job of teaching you how to use new plants while slowly introducing new zombie types so as not to overwhelm the player and it’s something you don’t really appreciate until you play a game that does the opposite. I picked up Bloons TD 6 during last month’s Steam Summer Sale and while that game is fun, it introduces new monkey types (towers) so quickly you barely have time to understand where they’re best used. I know a Druid Monkey destroys balloons and so does a Wizard Monkey, but as a new player, I still don’t really know the difference. In Plants vs. Zombies, completing a level rewards you with a new plant which is usually effective on the following stage, so you always know what your unlocked plants are capable of. For example, your reward for completing level 1-6 is the Snow Pea, an upgraded Peashooter that can slow down enemies with ice. The following level features Pole Vaulting Zombies, which move much faster than most zombies, and you’ll discover that Snow Pea is great at nullifying these foes’ speed bonus. If somehow learning by doing isn’t enough for you, or you’ve simply forgotten, the game features an encyclopedia of each plant’s abilities, ensuring that you’re always in the know.
Adventure Mode sprinkles a good amount of palette-cleansing minigames throughout its campaign that give the player a break from regular gameplay. One minigame ditches the tower defense concept and provides the player with Wall-nuts that behave like bouncing bowling balls, complete with tumbling pin sounds when they collide with incoming zombies. Another equips the player with a mallet and plays like Whack-a-mole. The most common minigame type plays like your standard tower defense level but features a conveyer belt of the more expensive plants for free, so you’ll end up with a lawn you wouldn’t normally see in Adventure Mode, like one filled with Chompers. The regular game itself is plenty enjoyable but I appreciate that a silly game gives the player the opportunity to do more silly things.
Speaking of minigames, this game is filled with them. There’s Beghouled, which is Plants vs Zombies’ take on Bejeweled; Portal Combat, where portals appear randomly on your lawn and inadvertently extend lanes; Invisi-ghoul, where the zombies are invisible, ZomBotany, where the zombies have fused with plants and can fire at your plants as they approach; and many more. There are also alternate game modes like Vasebreaker (where you break vases that release either zombies or plants and must construct a defense on the fly) and Survival (a wave-based mode where you survive as long as possible). If you somehow get bored of every other game mode, there’s even a garden where you can tend to the plants you’ve collected while playing. There are a lot of ways to stay entertained with this package.
I should at least try and be a bit critical of a game I adore, so here are a few complaints: the resolution is poor since the game is from 2009, there’s no Windowed Fullscreen option so I have to alt-tab to use windows on my other monitor, and the in-game Steam overlay is a bit borked. Sometimes the game lags a bit during plant selection, but it does clear up before actual gameplay. Uh, also Plants vs. Zombies 2 never officially came to PC, so that kind of stinks.
Yeah, Plants vs. Zombies is great.
I really do yearn for the return of casual PopCap games to PC. Two of my favorite modern PC titles, Hearthstone and Balatro, are pick up and play games with a ton of charm, just like the games featured here. I doubt it’ll ever happen, but I’d love if EA/PopCap brought some of their mobile titles to computers, even if their main focus is iOS and Android.
Those were my thoughts on Chuzzle, Peggle, Zuma, Bejeweled 3, and Plants vs. Zombies; hopefully I’ve inspired you to check out some of these titles for the first time or revisit some old favorites. They’re all great games enjoyable by anyone. If you’re interested, definitely pick up The PopCap Party Pack when it goes on sale.