It was my first pinball game that mattered to me.
It isn't much, but is honest work.
It isn't much, but is honest work.
Sonic Pinball Party isn't even the best Pinball Party of 2003.
If you check the reviews for Sonic Pinball Party, you'll get a lot of "It's a pinball game, but I don't like pinball!" And if you're judging the genre off of games like this, it's hard to argue against that. Sonic Pinball Party's tables suck ass.
There's only three tables, and none of them have the focus or depth of games released a decade prior. It's also a very traditional pinball game on the surface, where you try to hit specific targets multiple times in order to active other elements on the table and score more points, but the rulesets are restrictive and boring. Multiball is an active detriment to hitting some of the score thresholds needed for story mode. I would say that the reduced screen real estate would be detrimental towards control of the mode, but Sonic Pinball Party is easy enough to where, combined with tilt, I rarely lost a ball on accident. Most of my ball losses came from the Samba De Amigo table's outlane.
There's also just a bunch of little things that hurt the experience for pinball diehards and new players alike. The ball physics aren't great. Visually the game isn't anything to write home about. The faux-DMD they use isn't visually interesting and eats up already limited screen real estate. There's a time limit on most of the story mode sections, and pinball with a time limit feels real rough.
I know, for a lot of different reasons, this probably wouldn't have been feasible but I wish they just put their whole effort into making one really detailed, interesting board with visuals that didn't seem tied to the genre, and relied on the Chao Garden to keep casuals hooked. A total skip for diehards of both sonic and pinball.
If you check the reviews for Sonic Pinball Party, you'll get a lot of "It's a pinball game, but I don't like pinball!" And if you're judging the genre off of games like this, it's hard to argue against that. Sonic Pinball Party's tables suck ass.
There's only three tables, and none of them have the focus or depth of games released a decade prior. It's also a very traditional pinball game on the surface, where you try to hit specific targets multiple times in order to active other elements on the table and score more points, but the rulesets are restrictive and boring. Multiball is an active detriment to hitting some of the score thresholds needed for story mode. I would say that the reduced screen real estate would be detrimental towards control of the mode, but Sonic Pinball Party is easy enough to where, combined with tilt, I rarely lost a ball on accident. Most of my ball losses came from the Samba De Amigo table's outlane.
There's also just a bunch of little things that hurt the experience for pinball diehards and new players alike. The ball physics aren't great. Visually the game isn't anything to write home about. The faux-DMD they use isn't visually interesting and eats up already limited screen real estate. There's a time limit on most of the story mode sections, and pinball with a time limit feels real rough.
I know, for a lot of different reasons, this probably wouldn't have been feasible but I wish they just put their whole effort into making one really detailed, interesting board with visuals that didn't seem tied to the genre, and relied on the Chao Garden to keep casuals hooked. A total skip for diehards of both sonic and pinball.
Fine
Decent pinball game on the go.