What am I playing? The Pinball (Mac, iPhone)

Pinball, the ancient and mystical art! Some would say it requires a deep and innate relationship with the table to truly do well. After all, how else could a deaf, dumb, and blind kid play such a mean pinball?

I love pinball and have even when the skill involved was completely beyond my grasp, as well as the buttons. Hard for a little guy on a milk crate to reach both buttons! I have even made pilgrimages to what has to be the current pinball Mecca – The Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas.

It’s within that context that I can comfortably blame any dislike on my part towards ‘The Pinball’ to be related to the qualities inherent in the game and not any misunderstanding of the medium myself.

Gameprom has apparently made a name for themselves with three fully 3d, full physics pinball boards on the iPhone. I’ve seen countless rave reviews of these boards to the extent that I was convinced to purchase each of them even after I tried and was not impressed by the Wild West board. Sure, the physics are realistic, but the boards are uninteresting, provide no clear progression of game states, and boring flow.

Gameprom came up with a concept that really excited me at first. They released software for OSX that provided a full screen, full power rendition of their boards. That in itself, not so interesting, but the fact that the game was controlled by an iPod touch or iPhone.. That’s interesting!

While trying out the software I sadly was driven to ask myself ‘why am I doing this?’ I look down in my hands and I have this little interface that I’m mashing the hell out of to play some Wild West pinball, but all I could feel is that I wanted something else. I wanted to reach for the keyboard. I wanted to go to my Xbox to play some Williams Hall of Fame – arguably the best pinball simulator in existence. Instead I’m stuck with the requirement of using an external device for this pinball for a perfectly arbitrary reason.

It may stand to argue that they’re tying the experience through the iPhone app so that all of the board purchases can be handled through the pre-existing payment infrastructure. I can appreciate that. Kind of. But allow untethering after the board purchase!

It boils down to the boards. The free one – Wild West – remains uninteresting, even at higher resolutions. I know the others available aren't that hot either. In the end – try the free board out for the novelty, but don’t get sucked in. Too much hardware required for too little gameplay. Pinball can be magic, but this is almost as far from that as possible.