Monday, April 30, 2007

Pinball Hall of Fame: The Gottlieb Collection

I'm a big pinball fan, and when I picked this up this weekend for the PS2, I had very high hopes. Unfortunately this game doesn't quite deliver for me. Maybe I'm spoiled from playing the excellent Little Wing Pinball game Monster Fair, but this game has a few glaring problems that keep it from being an absolute blast to play. The first problem lies in the physics of the ball. The ball seems very light, which may or may not give the player a competitive advantage, but it certainly throws off the feeling of realism I was expecting to get with this game. The other problem with this game lies in the overall glitchiness of the newer games. I've had Tee'd Off! get stuck on at least four separate occasions, and when a ball gets stuck, you have to tilt to eject it, or in one case, even completely restart the game. Very disappointing, as some of the older games from the 50's and 60's, while a neat diversion, aren't the reason why I bought this collection. Other problems include the lack of a quick Reset (load times are atrocious) and pre-set, uneraseable high scores which may or may not be impossible to achieve. Given that I only paid $10 for this game, I can overlook some of its flaws, and it certainly looks great from a graphical standpoint, but if I'd paid the game's original $20 price, I would be a bit more upset by the bugs in it.

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