First off, I have to say: whoever came up with the idea of this deserves a prize. I grew up in an era when every successful or semi-successful show got a pinball game based on it, but Sonic is probably the one IP that actually makes sense as a pinball game. After all, it's all about rolling into a ball and bouncing around really fast right? Seems like a match made in heaven, and honestly it's not bad, but it suffered from poor execution.
The levels are sprawling, with multiple 'pinball table' setups per level, connected by a network of tunnels. The player needs to meet certain requirements (hitting targets, destroying obstacles, etc.), spread across all the tables, in order to unlock the boss area. It sounds like a good idea, but this is a case in which messing with the traditional pinball structure isn't a good thing: the fun in pinball is trying to build up a high score on a table which is chock-full of different ways to score points. By adding linear objectives and requirements and spreading them out over a very large and sparsely-populated area, the game takes away these two crucial elements of a good pinball game. Beyond the mandatory objectives, there really isn't anything to do on the tables - they're very bland. My experience of the game was roughly 10% meeting the objectives, then 90% trying to hit that one last objective, accidentally going to a different (boring) part of the map, finally returning to the right (boring) place, trying to hit the target, falling into another (boring) part of the map, etc.
The tedium might have been alleviated somewhat if I were able to play the game in small doses, but there isn't even any password or save system which means I had to slog through the entire thing in one sitting well beyond the novelty of the idea (and my patience) had worn thin.
Looking at my other negative reviews I realize most of them were frustrating or cheap in some way. This game wasn't really either, but it was extremely uninteractive and boring which is the last thing you want either a Sonic or a pinball game to be.
The levels are sprawling, with multiple 'pinball table' setups per level, connected by a network of tunnels. The player needs to meet certain requirements (hitting targets, destroying obstacles, etc.), spread across all the tables, in order to unlock the boss area. It sounds like a good idea, but this is a case in which messing with the traditional pinball structure isn't a good thing: the fun in pinball is trying to build up a high score on a table which is chock-full of different ways to score points. By adding linear objectives and requirements and spreading them out over a very large and sparsely-populated area, the game takes away these two crucial elements of a good pinball game. Beyond the mandatory objectives, there really isn't anything to do on the tables - they're very bland. My experience of the game was roughly 10% meeting the objectives, then 90% trying to hit that one last objective, accidentally going to a different (boring) part of the map, finally returning to the right (boring) place, trying to hit the target, falling into another (boring) part of the map, etc.
The tedium might have been alleviated somewhat if I were able to play the game in small doses, but there isn't even any password or save system which means I had to slog through the entire thing in one sitting well beyond the novelty of the idea (and my patience) had worn thin.
Looking at my other negative reviews I realize most of them were frustrating or cheap in some way. This game wasn't really either, but it was extremely uninteractive and boring which is the last thing you want either a Sonic or a pinball game to be.