"You know what would make for a good game?"
"What?"
"A pinball game where the tables are empty, there's nothing to do! And Mario is also in the game. As the ball. One time I ate a VCR and blood wouldn't stop coming out of my mouth for days, so I super glued my eyes open while rolling in a big box filled with rusty nails"
"Hey I like your brain! Here's money!"
And Mario Pinball Land was born. I admit I haven't played a whole heap of GBA games, but from what I played of that, I would easily call it the worst GBA game made. Not only that, but the worst pinball game made. And I own Pinball Jam for Atari Lynx! The game where the ball would just magically vanish and never return, leaving you to stare out the window in confusion. So yeah, when it was announced the same developer (Fuse Games) would be creating a Metroid pinball game for DS, I sort of frowned. Especially because I also don't like the Metroid Prime games!
But you know what I do like? Pizza. I also like pinball! I'm the one goon that goes to the arcade to walk past all the new, stupid $400 for one credit games to head on over to the dusty pinball section. Well, I would be if arcades weren't just a weird myth. Oh but I'm turning this review into something you'd expect to see on IGN, a hundred paragraphs of nothing relating to the game in question!
THE ANSWER. Metroid Prime Pinball. It's pretty much fantastic. Much like the awful Prime games (drama), you have to collect artifacts! You do this by completing objectives, of sorts, on the various tables. From destroying all the Space Pirates, by uh.. running into them, to taking down bosses (pro tip: you also do this by running into them). There are times when Samus will stop emulating Sonic the Hedgehog, stand up and shoot bullets all over the joint. There's also wall jumping thrown in here! There are only two 'main' tables, Talon Overworld and Pirate Frigate. Loaded with rails, ramps, bumpers and all the other things one would expect in a pinball game. Bosses take place on totally different tables, but they're really lacking, because defeating the boss is about the only thing they're used for. I'm going to put a spoiler tag down below! Wow!
Once you collect all artifacts, you're warped to the temple, and WHOOOPS the artifacts all turn into balls, WHOOOPS TWELVE BALL MULTIBALL. All while Meta Ridley goes bezerk, and you can do NOTHING to defend yourself, you just have to focus on getting all the balls locked into their correct places. Crazy wonderful!
The music is STUNNING. In terms of actual audio quality, it's right up there with a normal fancy console game. At first a lot of the tunes sound like they've been ripped straight from the Prime games, but they're altered in quite a few ways after a bit. Pirate Frigate has a really great rock version of the Metroid main theme, too. If you can find the E3 trailer somewhere on the internets, it plays during that. Graphics are just as impressive. Totally pre-rendered, with very small amounts of FMV thrown around the joint (like when you obtain an artifact). It works! Works like a bridge building Lemming! Talon Overworld has some pretty convincing rain going on, the screens grow darker, the ball will even cast reflections in the puddles! I am amused by such things!
Ball physics (is this pornography) are great. Pornography is fairly important for a pinball game. If you dare, go and play Mario Pinball Land, the ball is all stupid and floaty. Which makes even less sense considering the ball is MARIO. Much like Sonic Pinball Party or High Speed (NES), it's like playing in OUTTA SPAAAACE. Not here! The addition of the free Rumble (Wumble) Pak really adds to the whole pinball feeling thing, too. It's noisy as hell, because I suppose hell is pretty noisy. But not enough to overpower the music if you've slid the volume to MAXIMUM POWER. They've even tossed in a multiplayer mode, eight players, running off a single cartridge. I'm not quite sure how it works, I think it's turn based. But you can play it in single player, (and it's a totally new table not found anywhere in normal single player). The objective is to get 10,000 points.
I'm impressed. REALLY impressed. I think I'm enjoying this more than Flipnic (PS2). And the fact that it's Metroid Prime and Fuse, two things that I hated, is saying something (words!) I'm even going to go as far as saying if you've despised pinball games in the past, you'll at the very least have four or five seconds of fun with this pinball game. And as a pinball game (no it's a racing survival horror FPS), the replay value is basically unlimited.
Reggie must have kicked an insane amount of arse over at Fuse for them to pump this out. I give this eight and a half handcuffs out of ten!~
Topic: (Virtual Boy) Metroid Prime Pinball (Read 3360 times)
