With the recent release of Zen Pinball it took me back to the days when I was younger and playing on the pinball machines. Although I’m not quite old enough to say I enjoyed the glory days when Pinball machines were the focal point for entertainment in small restaurants and establishments, this digital version definitely brings pinball to the “table”.
Pinball as we all know, is played by launching a ball onto a table, which has two flippers on the bottom, and sometimes more spread throughout the table, that are controlled by two buttons on each side of the machine. The goal is to rack up the highest score possible by keeping your ball in play. If a ball is creeping in a direction you don’t like usually you would nudge or push the table, in the case of this video version obviously there is no table to push but rather than use the six-axis controller to favor this, it is available by using the analog sticks.
Zen Pinball brings you digital pinball at its finest and even though pinball may not be the big hit anymore, and many digital versions of the classic game have failed, this one does all aspects of the game well. From the start of the game the menu caught my eye. You scroll across your game and option selections which use a pinball machine display to make up the operating menu. Not to mention the up to date stat tracker that scrolls across the bottom of the screen keeping track of all the players high scores. It’s nice to see that the stat tracking was implemented considering pinball was always about the hi-score.
There is four tables to play on from the get go and I’m sure more will come as dlc later. Each table differs from each other in various ways bringing a new experince each time, from a car themed table called V12 to a table set in the city of gold, El Dorado. The tables are all fun to play and each one has hidden characteristics to match the theme through out to rack up even higher scores. There is the single player game, and local and online multi-player modes as well. Local matches are played out just like a regular game of pinball would, while each of the players wait for there opponents to lose a ball, so they can get a chance. The online portion pits all the players in a race at the same time to reach a hi-score set by the host. You can not lose by losing all your balls but each ball lost will result in penalties. Another neat feature for the online play is it supports the PlayStation eye for video chat.
Zen Pinball is pinball in video form. It is and always will be hard to make a video game out of the classic pinball machine but, this game does it good and adds a lot of features with both local and online play to keep a fan happy. For those who are not pinball fans , you may actually enjoy pinball after playing this digital version because each time you lose three balls you don’t have to insert more coins and you can play it in the comfort of your home on your PS3 console. From the menu screen as flashy and cool as it is, to the various tables you can play on, Zen Pinball set out to create a digital version of a classic game known by all and it succeeded. Zen Pinball is avaliable via the PSN for $9.99.
Gameplay: 8.5
Graphics: 8.0
Sound: 7.2
Controls: 8.0
Replay Value: 8.5
Online Play: 8.0
Overall: 8.0
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