Take The Plunge
IN SHORT: If you like pinball, you'll have plenty of fun with this title
This is Zen Studios' second next-gen pinball game, their first being Pinball FX for the Xbox 360. If you've played Pinball FX, you know what to expect from Zen Pinball, with a few minor tweaks and changes.
For the uninitiated, Zen Studios' pinball games are accurate pinball simulations, albeit with a floaty physics model, featuring unique pinball table designs. While realism is great, it often feels like Zen could have taken better advantage of Pinball-on-TV to do things impossible on a real table.
Zen Pinball goes a little farther than Pinball FX, though, with a few unique touches only possible in video pinball. Sometimes you'll see the ball emit sparks, or a fanciful animated device on the table. But this game is solidly footed in reality, with 4 well themed and designed tables. Tesla is this reviewer's favorite. The tables also have more variety than Pinball FX, with more varied sounds, ramps and special features.
Online play has been expanded, featuring tournaments, and updating news ticker, and more expansive leaderboards. These improvements are evolutionary, but welcome.
Controls could have been better. The nudge sometimes seems to lag, and cannot be mapped to the sixaxis. The omission of sixaxis support is baffling, and most users are likely to hunt through the menus on first run only to not find any option to enable motion controlled nudging.
WHAT TO EXPECT
+ Realistic pinball simulation
+ 4 original tables that are well designed
+ Great online interactivity
+ An evolutionary step from Pinball FX
- Long Loads
- Laggy nudge
- No motion control
BOTTOM LINE
Bored of Pinball FX? Like Pinball games? This is a safe bet.