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Monster Pinball

By Super Zee on 11/06/2009 at 07:59:51 - 6 comments
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Monster in your pocket
Monster In Your Pocket

Matmi's Monster Pinball is an attempt to nail down the magic formula of videogame pinball and it largely succeeds, blasting you with a barrage of charm and beauty as it unfolds. It's a beautifully designed experience that's as playable as it is attractive, perfectly suited for the quick five-minute gaming sessions that the iPhone is so good at.

The first thing you'll notice is how beautiful it looks and sounds. Hamish Cooper's unique and characterful designs underpin every visual element and the monsters themselves would not look out of place next to your stuffed Goompa or plush Companion Cube. From the cute farting dogs to the spinning three-eyed Bindy, every character jumps out of the screen with a great use of vibrant colour and slick animation. The sound effects complement the action perfectly and are so gloriously arcadey that the game should come with a sticky carpet and twenty chavs for the complete Southsea seafront effect. The lack of music is a little disappointing but it does leave you the freedom to play your own pinball tracks. The WipEout 2097 soundtrack fits perfectly.

Monster Pinball's stab at originality is that you don't play on just one table but on a set of six, all linked together though varies doors and side alleys, each home to a unique style and layout. You'll see most of Invade as it's always where you start or fall back to, bumper lasers firing to hold back the ever approaching alien invasion. From here you'll eventually find yourself swinging round a blue vortex in The Hole, bouncing off special padded heads in Headbanger, electrocuting poor little test monsters in Mutator, firing treats into a farting puppy in Hogie Feed and spinning the fat but wonderful Bindy in Brain Drain. Each table is absolutely unique and has suitably gorgeous individual sound effects. This multi-table gameplay mechanic can be frustrating to begin with as it can feel that you spend far too much time trying to get out of Invade, but this is soon adjusted to as you begin to explore the various links between the six.

The tables may be visually succulent but can initially feel very sparse. It probably doesn't help that Pinball aficionados will be expecting the constant audio-visual tsunami of real tables, so the sometimes elongated dips in pace can be disconcerting. However, you soon learn that each table has a surprising level of depth and score-heavy opportunities are quickly memorised and targeted. The six tables also start to link together in your head, so that it almost feels that they are parts of one larger table, and the routes to each become clearer.

The controls are simple but effective. Two fat red buttons each control two sets of flippers at a time and the sprung ball launcher is easily thumb activated. For the cheaters out there, a good shake will cause a Tilt, bit you are limited to five before the table locks up. Frame rate is consistently solid and smooth and the ball, for the most part, bounces around very realistically.

The inclusion of Local and Global leaderboards is a very welcome addition and elevates Monster Pinball to Geometry Wars levels of score chasing. Be warned, though - the default high score turns out to be miniscule when compared to the Global scores of real players, so don't celebrate for too long when you top it. Globally, you're ranked by number, so the addictive quality of trying to inch higher up the rankings does not ever get old.

The beauty of the iPod Touch/iPhone is that it's always there to fill those little daily voids, and there isn't anything better to cram in that space than Monster Pinball. Sure, a few tweaks to the ball physics and the option to play only one table at a time would be nice, but that's what updates are for. As it stands, this shiny, glorious gem of a game is worth every penny and you'll most likely be neglecting everything else until you get above that player on the leaderboard. The extremely quick loading Monster Pinball will soon snag every quick minute and steal every spare moment, but you'll undoubtedly end up loving Bindy and his friends for a long, long time.

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#1 - peej - on 11/06/2009 at 08:38 wrote:

#2 - Carlo - on 11/06/2009 at 10:05 wrote:

#3 - Carlo - on 11/06/2009 at 10:33 wrote:

#4 - peej - on 11/06/2009 at 10:34 wrote:

#5 - Mapster - on 11/06/2009 at 10:40 wrote:

#6 - peej - on 11/06/2009 at 10:54 wrote:

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