temetherian

ken wants your traffic


As props to Ken (whose devotion to his site reminds that I probably need a redesign of my own), some brief thoughts on ZEN Pinball, which was recently released on the PlayStation Store. Or rather, on the demo. The game looks great -- the graphics are pretty, smooth, etc -- the gameplay is there (though I'd prefer something more analog for the plunger), and the table I played seemed fairly well designed. I didn't play very long, so I can't really comment much on the special events it has, but the layout seems nice, and it plays well (unlike a certain real-life Monopoly table I encountered). That said, I can't really recommend it. The deal breaker is the camera angles. At a real pinball table, you may be moving your head a little, but you've pretty much got two angles: looking at the table, with a little bit of scanning, and looking at the display. ZEN Pinball shows the display as a HUD, and provides six camera angles for the table. The best two are what I'm inclined to call "six-year-old at the table" and "six-year-old at the table, standing on a phone book". With the low angle, you just can't get a good view of most of the table in these views. The other 4 seem to be there in an attempt to make up for this. They don't. So, if you play pinball by staring at the flippers, just trying to keep the ball in play, this game might work for you. Otherwise, I think you might find ZEN Pinball too frustrating to enjoy.



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