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Pinball Shuffle
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Graphics & Sound:
Pinball Shuffle leaves a lot to be desired in almost every aspect, and many of those detractors end up making the game hard to enjoy and, quite frankly, frustrating to play.
Pinball Shuffle features a board with a gun theme that not only provides two pistol plungers, but a revolver six shooter that can be loaded up with multiple balls before they all fire onto the board at the same time. Quite frankly, the board itself looks good, but while visually appealing, I found numerous graphical issues that hurts the game's presentation a lot.
Not only would I experience major drops in framerate when I had several balls in play, but I also found problems involving a mini-boss that appears near the paddles to mess up your ball's trajectory. I experienced everything from this character being positioned waste-deep in the board instead of walking on top of it, and on at least one playthrough, I had gotten rid of the mini-boss, but he was still walking around and getting hit by the balls even though he was no longer visible. It's issues like this that really make the game hard to enjoy.
Unfortunately, Pinball Shuffle's visual issues aren't limited to actual gameplay. While the game works in both horizontal and vertical layouts, the game looks ridiculous and stretched when held in the vertical orientation, a position which I would have thought would be right for a pinball game. The horizontal orientation is fine, but it is obvious that the game just stretches the same image to fit the rotated screen instead of actually trying to handle the taller view differently.
Audio-wise, Pinball Shuffle features a variety of techno and house music that I would imagine people who like that style would enjoy, but I, frankly, found it nervewracking. I know the idea is to help keep the overall energy of the game up and keep you focused on what should be a fast-paced game, but it just doesn't feel right. Then again, given my avoidance of this particular kind of music, it could just be me. Either way, I pretty much always turned the music off while playing.
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Gameplay:
Pinball Shuffle is apparently a sequel to another pinball title following the exploits of Stab Fisticuffs and Gunner. I had not realized this was a followup to Pinball Massacre until I sat down to actually write this review. I'm not saying that this game is so drastically different from its predecessor that it doesn't feel like a sequel, I just never played or knew of the first game. In fact, when the game started up and the opening cut-scene said "I'm impressed you managed to make it this far..." I thought I was experiencing an odd glitch that made me miss some of the story in Pinball Shuffle. I guess this feels more like a branding issue. Had the game been titled something like "Pinball Massacre 2: Pinball Shuffle" or something indicating it was the second part in a series of games, this first impression would have been a lot different.
So, while the game does offer a story, the gameplay is all about the board itself. As I said before, the board features two plungers, one on each side, and they each look like pistols turned on their sides so that the guns appear to shoot the balls to the back of the board. As you would expect from any pinball game, the main part of the board is filled with bumpers and lights and pop-up targets for you to hit in order to rack up points, but Pinball Shuffle goes a little farther in that it will give you missions that no ordinary pinball machine could.
Not only is there the aforementioned mini-boss, but the back half of the board will flip to display a series of targets for you to hit. This, combined with a boss character towards the back of the board, just shows how much more you can do with a digital pinball game over a physical one. Unfortunately, there are also plenty of ways that a digital one can go wrong - but more on that in the Game Mechanics section.
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Difficulty:
Pinball Shuffle has three difficulty settings: Easy, Medium and Hard. Each setting affects the size of the paddle, the number of balls you are given and the speed of those balls. Oddly enough, I found I would get further with the Medium setting than the other two, but maybe that's because that setting is supposed to more accurately resemble how a real machine would feel - at least as far as ball speed is concerned.
Regardless of the difficulty setting, the game offers some interesting, but at times overly difficult, missions to complete and just because you might accomplish one of those goals before it is actually assigned to you, doesn't mean that you can easily reproduce the feat. Some missions are pretty standard for pinball games and involve hitting certain bumpers, targets or lights, but others, like filling up the revolver, not only require hitting the ramp correctly, but having the right switches thrown to make the ball follow the right track and land in the six shooter. This is tough to do, no matter which setting you play the game under.
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Game Mechanics:
Unfortunately, Pinball Shuffle has enough technical issues to make the game too hard to bear, even given its potential. Besides the issues mentioned above, I found plenty of small problems that just make the game too buggy to deal with. On more than one occasion, I found I had two balls on the board, but when both ended up in a plunger, I didn't get the option to launch them again. Instead, they just sat there. I guess the game thought there was a third ball in play, but there wasn't.
Similarly, I regularly ran into general unresponsiveness from the paddles. And before you ask, no it wasn't from causing the machine to tilt. While you can bump the machine, and it will lock up the controls, I used this technique sparingly. What's worse is that I saw one or more issues in pretty much every playthrough, and every time I started up Pinball Shuffle, a part of me was wondering what new, or old, bug I would see this time.
Beyond those problems though, there is a definite issue with how in-control you feel, and I think that has more to do with the iPhone being a touchscreen-based device and not something with any kind of analog input. This is especially true when considering the plunger. While the idea of a gun pulling back and firing is a nice visual, the fact that I am only pushing a button on the screen to perform this action means I have no control over the force of the ball. I might not always want to pull the plunger all the way back, but I don't have a choice in Pinball Shuffle.
Honestly, I can't recommend this particular game to anyone. In doing research, I see that the developers, The Fictory, are just getting started in game development and that the Stabb Gunner pinball games are their titles. As a result, I see not only a lot of little errors, but also a lot of room for improvement that will come with more releases. I would like to see how the company refines their skills and hopefully they will come out with updates and patches to solve some of these issues, but in the meantime, Pinball Shuffle is a rough experience. |
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-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications AKA Chris Meyer |
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