Game Reviews

Undead Attack! Pinball

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Undead Attack! Pinball

Now here's a style of game that's not easy to break from its established format: the digital pinball machine. With the App Store overflowing like a Raccoon City graveyard, developers need to find new and interesting ways of putting a twist on established gameplay archetypes and few have done as impressive a job as Undead Attack! Pinball.

Yes, it's a pinball game, and a superb-looking 3D one at that. Rather than just scoring points in three balls, though, it combines the flippers and bumpers with a third-person shooter.

Weird, eh?

The tables are beautifully designed to bring life to the world of a zombie holocaust survivor. That the grand foyer of a mansion house could be at once so recognisable as a piece of architecture, yet also be a fully equipped and dynamic pinball table is a success of intelligent design.

Miniature zombies stumble through these three levels/tables, heading for the gate – the point between the two flippers where you'd normally lose your pinball – to beat their way in and devour all that fresh meat. Keeping them away from the gate is your task and it's accomplished by squashing the shrunken undead with your ball.

Since the objective is so very different from arcade pinball, you're also given as many balls as you want until the gate is finally breached.

Like a zombie with a broken angle (see Dawn of the Dead for further details), the game stumbles in its actual pinball mechanics. The ball moves a little too slowly to lend the game a realistic feel for the physics of a pinball machine. I realise this verges on a non-sequitur, seeing as it's not meant to be a real pinball machine (after all, it is filled with the living dead) but the slow and exaggerated mechanics do spoil the arcade illusion somewhat.

That's not to say that Undead Attack! Pinball is a poor example of digital pinball, because it most certainly isn't. Many of the cracks in this one aspect of the gameplay are smoothly plastered over thanks to the impressively entertaining originality of the concept.

Therefore, as long as you're not looking for another highly accurate pinball simulator, but do fancy a game of amusingly dexterous skill, Undead Attack! Pinball will easily delight. Wizards and pinball purists should probably think twice.

Undead Attack! Pinball

A wonderfully imaginative and entertaining notion that stumbles at the last hurdle due to lacklustre ball physics, but still offers a refreshingly unique gaming experience
Score
Spanner Spencer
Spanner Spencer
Yes. Spanner's his real name, and he's already heard that joke you just thought of. Although Spanner's not very good, he's quite fast, and that seems to be enough to keep him in a regular supply of free games and away from the depressing world of real work.