Gamertell

Title: Dream Pinball
Price: $19.99
System(s): DS (Wii, PC)
Release Date: April 22, 2008
Publisher (Developer): SouthPeak Games (TopWare Interactive, Zuxxez Entertainment)
ESRB Rating: “Everyone 10+” for mild blood and mild suggestive themes
Pros: Good sound effects, fairly nice audio, odd material balls and fun themes. It’s affordable portable pinball game that includes wireless features.
Cons: 3D actually gets in the way. Dizzying camera, poor use of dual screens and lack of alternate flipper controls.
Overall Score: Two thumbs sideways; 70/100; C-; * * out of 5

Pinball may be the earliest olde fashioned arcade game that didn’t involve a guy in a funny outfit yelling at you through a megaphone. The sounds, the feel of the flippers and shaking the table can never really be duplicated without some pressure-sensitive buttons, a rumble pack and a motion sensitivity feature, but SouthPeak gives it the ol’ college try with the 3D game Dream Pinball for the DS.

Unfortunately, The game forgets its first, best asset (the dual screens) and never quite captures the fast-slipper action of real-world pinball.

Pins and Needless

Each of the game’s six boards have a unique theme with appropriate sound effects and actions. The Monsters board for example, includes creepy Zombie and Ghost specials, ball graves and gates to Hell. Much like real pinball machines, a few of the boards have activation points that are pretty much impossible to reach without a lot of multiball luck or excessive use of the nudge feature.

To activate the flippers, you press the shoulder buttons on the DS, which seems a natural control scheme but can get quite tiresome if you like to play for prolonged periods of time, An alternate control scheme that uses the control pad and A button makes for a much more natural hand position (especially for well-weathered gamers). The control pad is instead used to nudge the entire board and the buttons control the camera choices, pause and ball launch.

The 3D graphics look pretty good when the board is still, but when in motion, the graphics get in the way, making it hard to discern bumpers, flippers and other objects and sometimes even impossible to follow the ball. It an unnecessary level of difficulty that completely negates any actual pinball abilities you might have,

Two is Better Than One

You view the board like a real-world pinball machine where the top is the score board and the bottom screen is the play area. Since the board is taller than the screen, the camera has to essentially follow the ball (really flip between camera views), often making it hard to tell exactly where your flippers are in relation to the ball or even where the ball is. In all of the view options, they forgot a top-to-bottom, two-screen view where you can see the entire board. They even tease you with pictures of the full boards in the manual.

That view flipping can be set in the Options menu so the camera will change when you are in the top or bottom of the board. Unfortunately, I found only one option (Camera 2) was the best for both and only ever changed to another camera by accident. The other cameras make the angle too obtuse and further obscure the view, making it unnecessarily difficult to play.

While I usually turn a game’s volume way down, Dream Pinball is much more enjoyable with the sound on and up. It’s not that it has a particularly amazing soundtrack, but it helps to bring back the idea of a real pinball machine.

A few of the game’s fun features are the differing material balls (steel, two kinds of wood, marble, ivory and gold) which actually have some unique physics but really just look and sound cool on the different boards, especially when the multiball has mixed ball types. for those of you who like to partake in two-player action, there is a wireless multiplayer mode (I wasn’t able to find another gamer with a the same cart to give it a try).

Plenty of Balls but No Thrills

Regardless of the wonky camera angles, the game just doesn’t capture the sense of speed and thrill of a really good machine. The speed may have been knocked down a notch so the camera could keep up with the kinda nice 3D graphics but it ultimately worked against itself by slowing most boards’ to a mediocre pace. The $20 price tag does give the game a few bonus points for affordability.

Product Page [Dream Pinball]

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