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Dream Pinball (DS)

Status: Playing
I started playing this game on Friday 22 July, 2011
Current opinion of this game
No comment, yet.

July 26, 2011 11:50:37 AM
It's been a while since I've felt incredibly disappointed with a game. Even worse is that I've allowed that disappointment to sour what might otherwise have been a marginally entertaining game experience.

There are a lot of things that can potentially go wrong with a pinball game. The physics and feel of the game might be off, the tables might be uninteresting, collision detection might be inaccurate, and more. I can't honestly say that any of those things were a problem with this game (which I played for about 2 hrs). Rather, I was let down by how conservative the game is...

1. For a DS game, I was disappointed that it only used one screen for the table (with the 2nd screen for score and other nonsense). Really? You can't use BOTH screens for the table (thus allowed more detail, better view, and so on). While the game features 6 tables, I'd take fewer tables that used all of the screen any day. This game felt more like a GBA game than a DS one...

2. The back of the box mentions "balls made out of 6 materials such as: steel, wood, marble, ivory and gold". I'm not entirely sure what difference that made when playing the game. I guess some of the balls felt a little heavier making it harder to hit them up the ramps? That seems like a bad thing. Hey, here's some changes that make the game harder and more annoying to play! (rather than more interesting)

3. Once you've picked a table, you can't go back and select another. You have to re-start the game!

4. I'm not sure if most pinball games include this, but it struck me as weird that the ball was silent as it moved around the table (no audio feedback). It made the game feel really quiet...rather than noisy and fun (as most pinball machines are).


 
kudos for original design to Rodrigo Barria