Post by VectorX on Dec 22, 2012 21:26:04 GMT -5
Note: this is available on several different platforms. My review is on the iOS app, so that's why it's in this section.
With mom wanting more apps, she was mumbling about what to try last night. I asked her if she would play a pinball app. So she looked around and downloaded one today.
WOW–after looking up reviews for this thing, things have really improved since this came out in February or so! Like with OUYA, this is one of the big Kickstarter success stories, since it was totally funded by people and released on the i0S, the Vita, PS3, maybe the Xbox, I’m not sure.
Anyway, reviews for back then all said you got four famous tables to start with on a .99 download.
Well, with the one mom downloaded, there are now a whopping NINETEEN for absolutely free! I spent the last couple of hours downloading and playing all the tables. Those who know pinball fairly well should be familiar with Creature from the Black Lagoon, No Good Gophers, Twilight Zone, Bride of Pinbot, Gorgar, both of the Elivra Mistress of the Dark machines, Circus Voltaire, Funhouse, Ripley’s Believe it or Not, Black Hole and several others. These are licensed reproductions from many of the big pinball manufacturers.
With the startup of each table, a summary of who designed it, when it came out, what it featured, how many were produced, etc. appears. The camera will slowly zoom over the playfield and backglass and all.
The games play very well, from what I can tell. Pinball physics have been pretty hard to capture for many years since the advent of trying to get them to work in video games. You can choose from two HUD settings, whether the camera zooms in with the ball (which doesn’t really screw up much of the action, in my opinion) or remains stationary, and it has a few other features, few of which I’ve tried, as all I’ve done was play on default settings
As far as basic play goes, I give this 4.5 pinballs (har) out of five. I can’t say how authentic the stuff is or not, since I don’t know anywhere close about these machines as I do video games (a few of which I had never heard of, yet they were best sellers though). I assume all the gameplay mechanics of the machines are reproduced (again, since many of these machines I don’t know that well, even though I’ve played many of them before), like the spinning face on Bride of Pinbot, the inverted playfield on Black Hole, the dot matrix animations, etc. As far as I can tell, there’s only a few lacking things/some stuff doesn’t quite “work”, such as Big Shot from ‘72 or ‘73's scoring, even though it has the clunky sounds, it doesn’t look “rough” enough to be realistic once the ball goes down the drain and the bonus points fly. Another thing is that the soundtrack to Black Knight 2000 is totally missing, for some reason. Yes I know, some old video games are hard to emulate, but at times where the early voice synthesis was scratchy, it sounds just as bad on here. Maybe there was a legal issue with that one and they couldn’t acquire the music, or maybe the app will be updated to include it at a later date; several reviews that I read were no help, with all reviewers just being casual players, not really knowing the pinball scene very well, and one even said they had never heard of the famous manufacturers of Stern, Williams and D. Gottlieb (!). At least you can hear everything clearly, like the sense of humor in many of the games with the various speech and all, unlike with how most of us casual gamers, in general, who don’t own a machine (yet) and can only play these at a gaming expo like I have, as a lot of the times you can’t hear various machines, due to volume levels being different in large rooms full of them; that’s not the case here, you can hear everything quite well indeed.
On the down sides, though, is that nudging doesn’t seem to do anything at all (just shake the iPad, as a reviewer also said it doesn’t seem to work for them either). If you tend to move your thumbs around by accident when you get worked up (used for activating the flippers), you can obscure parts of the playfield (I don’t know how this works on the Vita or anything though). There have been complaints about the ball being hard to see on busy playfields, but you can choose several patterns and change the look of the ball, which helps. There also isn’t a big variety here; maybe it’s just me, but when you play a bunch of games made in the 90s and on with all the ramps and stuff, a lot of them seem the same (as that has happened with myself in real life in attending a local gaming expo and playing several of them from the same period in a row, which I don’t recommend! Mix it up, years- and era-wise!). Most of these were from the 90s, with only a couple being from the 70s and 80s; it’s a bit of a shock/playing gap of the difference with how simple Big Shot and Gorgar seem nowadays as compared with Taxi and the like. Also, as far as the free iOS app goes, if you are doing TELL well at a game, the free demo will suddenly end right in middle of game! And that’s annoying, especially if you hadn’t gotten very far with a certain game, then you unlock the castle or whatever one of the goals are for the first time, then you lose out on that (but at least these games are only a few bucks each, I think the most expensive one being $7.99). You also have to watch out for what it asks for when playing again, since it asks if you want to restore your purchases. At first I was saying no, which that meant I had to re-download games to play them again! However, if you say “yes” (even if you didn’t buy anything), it asks for your password, you have to cancel, and THEN play it...it gets annoying, having to do that over and over. And the app freezes up; reviews have mentioned this, and its happened several times where my demo ended, I’m asked to leave the game or pay for it or whatever, and it won’t let me leave, no matter how many times I hit that damn button. So I have to shut the iPad off and back on, which is also annoying. As a free app, I only rate this 3 out of 5 pinballs.
Anyway, this seems to be pretty solid and the reviews have been pretty good; it’s out on several platforms, and I don’t know how much any of it varies.
Anyone else familiar with this on another platform?
With mom wanting more apps, she was mumbling about what to try last night. I asked her if she would play a pinball app. So she looked around and downloaded one today.
WOW–after looking up reviews for this thing, things have really improved since this came out in February or so! Like with OUYA, this is one of the big Kickstarter success stories, since it was totally funded by people and released on the i0S, the Vita, PS3, maybe the Xbox, I’m not sure.
Anyway, reviews for back then all said you got four famous tables to start with on a .99 download.
Well, with the one mom downloaded, there are now a whopping NINETEEN for absolutely free! I spent the last couple of hours downloading and playing all the tables. Those who know pinball fairly well should be familiar with Creature from the Black Lagoon, No Good Gophers, Twilight Zone, Bride of Pinbot, Gorgar, both of the Elivra Mistress of the Dark machines, Circus Voltaire, Funhouse, Ripley’s Believe it or Not, Black Hole and several others. These are licensed reproductions from many of the big pinball manufacturers.
With the startup of each table, a summary of who designed it, when it came out, what it featured, how many were produced, etc. appears. The camera will slowly zoom over the playfield and backglass and all.
The games play very well, from what I can tell. Pinball physics have been pretty hard to capture for many years since the advent of trying to get them to work in video games. You can choose from two HUD settings, whether the camera zooms in with the ball (which doesn’t really screw up much of the action, in my opinion) or remains stationary, and it has a few other features, few of which I’ve tried, as all I’ve done was play on default settings
As far as basic play goes, I give this 4.5 pinballs (har) out of five. I can’t say how authentic the stuff is or not, since I don’t know anywhere close about these machines as I do video games (a few of which I had never heard of, yet they were best sellers though). I assume all the gameplay mechanics of the machines are reproduced (again, since many of these machines I don’t know that well, even though I’ve played many of them before), like the spinning face on Bride of Pinbot, the inverted playfield on Black Hole, the dot matrix animations, etc. As far as I can tell, there’s only a few lacking things/some stuff doesn’t quite “work”, such as Big Shot from ‘72 or ‘73's scoring, even though it has the clunky sounds, it doesn’t look “rough” enough to be realistic once the ball goes down the drain and the bonus points fly. Another thing is that the soundtrack to Black Knight 2000 is totally missing, for some reason. Yes I know, some old video games are hard to emulate, but at times where the early voice synthesis was scratchy, it sounds just as bad on here. Maybe there was a legal issue with that one and they couldn’t acquire the music, or maybe the app will be updated to include it at a later date; several reviews that I read were no help, with all reviewers just being casual players, not really knowing the pinball scene very well, and one even said they had never heard of the famous manufacturers of Stern, Williams and D. Gottlieb (!). At least you can hear everything clearly, like the sense of humor in many of the games with the various speech and all, unlike with how most of us casual gamers, in general, who don’t own a machine (yet) and can only play these at a gaming expo like I have, as a lot of the times you can’t hear various machines, due to volume levels being different in large rooms full of them; that’s not the case here, you can hear everything quite well indeed.
On the down sides, though, is that nudging doesn’t seem to do anything at all (just shake the iPad, as a reviewer also said it doesn’t seem to work for them either). If you tend to move your thumbs around by accident when you get worked up (used for activating the flippers), you can obscure parts of the playfield (I don’t know how this works on the Vita or anything though). There have been complaints about the ball being hard to see on busy playfields, but you can choose several patterns and change the look of the ball, which helps. There also isn’t a big variety here; maybe it’s just me, but when you play a bunch of games made in the 90s and on with all the ramps and stuff, a lot of them seem the same (as that has happened with myself in real life in attending a local gaming expo and playing several of them from the same period in a row, which I don’t recommend! Mix it up, years- and era-wise!). Most of these were from the 90s, with only a couple being from the 70s and 80s; it’s a bit of a shock/playing gap of the difference with how simple Big Shot and Gorgar seem nowadays as compared with Taxi and the like. Also, as far as the free iOS app goes, if you are doing TELL well at a game, the free demo will suddenly end right in middle of game! And that’s annoying, especially if you hadn’t gotten very far with a certain game, then you unlock the castle or whatever one of the goals are for the first time, then you lose out on that (but at least these games are only a few bucks each, I think the most expensive one being $7.99). You also have to watch out for what it asks for when playing again, since it asks if you want to restore your purchases. At first I was saying no, which that meant I had to re-download games to play them again! However, if you say “yes” (even if you didn’t buy anything), it asks for your password, you have to cancel, and THEN play it...it gets annoying, having to do that over and over. And the app freezes up; reviews have mentioned this, and its happened several times where my demo ended, I’m asked to leave the game or pay for it or whatever, and it won’t let me leave, no matter how many times I hit that damn button. So I have to shut the iPad off and back on, which is also annoying. As a free app, I only rate this 3 out of 5 pinballs.
Anyway, this seems to be pretty solid and the reviews have been pretty good; it’s out on several platforms, and I don’t know how much any of it varies.
Anyone else familiar with this on another platform?