dogmeat
06-09-2009, 02:57 PM
Pinball: Casino Madness - Divagen.com
$0.99 6.8MB
http://www.mindcrank.com/reviews/rev_pinballcasino.png http://www.mindcrank.com/reviews/rev_pinballcasino1.png
http://www.mindcrank.com/reviews/rev_pinballcasino2.png http://www.mindcrank.com/reviews/rev_pinballcasino3.png
http://www.mindcrank.com/reviews/rev_pinballcasino4.png http://www.mindcrank.com/reviews/rev_pinballcasino5.png
So people have been saying some nice things about Pinball: Casino Madness lately. It has supposedly gotten a price drop and update, so I decided to skip over some of my reviews to give this one a chance.
Graphics
When you first load up the game, you are met with a nice splash screen, almost neon lights looking sign spelling out the name of the game. You are then dropped directly into a demo of the table that mostly reminds me of the demo you see before playing wild west pinball. The camera rotates around, zooming in on key areas of the table and I think its a good way to inspect the table before playing. Looking at the table itself, it is very easy to distinguish the different areas, decals, and get a sense of what the table is all about.
The table and table graphics themselves, are all 2d, or some sort of flattened 3d, but I'm fairly certain it is 2d.
You'll find a nice roulette table smack dab in the middle of the table, with cards, chips and other gambling related decals strewn about the table. Aside from this, there are several ramps for the player to aim at, one of which, leads to a secret area with a mini game.
When you hit the screen with your finger the first time, you are presented with a nice interface that "slides" in from the sides of the screen reading New Game, Options and an icon that, at first, was hard to tell what it did, but hitting it once changed the rotation of the screen, nice!
The table features an LED style score overlay at the top of the screen which displays various status messages and of course, the score for the game. When playing the game the graphics light up when hit, paddles are easy to see as they are the brigtest possible yellow a human can see and generally, this game makes it very easy to see whats going on.
I don't know what the framerate of the game is, but while playing the ball and camera move in synchronous smooth motion and I didn't experience any choppiness, save for the choppiness that happens in all games when you go through tunnels on a train and it has to reconnect to 3G.
Sound
The game features a fast paced new agey sounding soundtrack which is comprised mostly of a light backbeat and some simple instruments at the top level making the soundtrack sound like fast paced trancelike elevator music. All in all, the music sits in the background and you will find yourself rarely taking notice of it, which is good.
The sound effects in this game seem to be lacking in the "ding-ding" sense of things. While the sound effects definitely remind the player of a pinball table they are mostly "thud" and "thunk" sounding. When you expect a "ding" sound effect while hitting a pin, you are met with a "thunk" and I really found that this took away from the pinball experience as a whole. So much so, that I found myself getting bored with playing the game, since there was nothing fun about the sounds, nothing "satisfying" like I describe with other games.
In the end, the sounds in this game aren't bad, but they aren't really that good either. It is sufficient to say that they "fill the need for sound in the game" and nothing more.
Handling
Let me start off by saying the game has good presentation value, the game loads very quickly and the interface to actually get you into the game is somewhat polished. When you actually start playing the game, it seemed like some funny stuff was going on behind the scenes.
The ball moves around at about a medium pace, when you hit the ball with your paddles, its not very hard to AIM or put force into the ball. What I did find though, is that the ball physics when you're not hitting the ball are inconsistent. You hit the ball, expecting it to go up and to the left for example, but halfway up it turns to the right for no apparent reason. At some points, you want the ball to "bounce" off something it had previously bounced off, yet it doesn't. I won't go too much into the problems that I faced while playing, but the fact that this happens at all, really killed the game for me.
I also found that certain skill shots didn't always work. Sometimes the ball would hit the entrance to a ramp for example, only to be repelled away by some invisible force. Either the graphics and physics aren't synching up or theres a physics problem with the game itself.
Another point of confusion was trying to actually get the ball on the playing field. One would think you take your right thumb and roll it along the bottom right of the screen ( where the ball is ) to launch it, but upon inspecting the instructions I found its the opposite. You have to roll your thumb along the top of the screen to actually get the ball on the playing field and this didn't make much sense to me but once I understood this, getting the ball on the table wasn't a problem.
One last thing to mention is the mini game. There is a mini game you can access if you hit a certain ramp. Its basically a mini pinball table where the goal is to light up all the numbers at the top of the mini table, each time you do this it resets the 15 second timer and you get another chance to light up the numbers again.
In the end, the game handles fine but there is some funny business when it comes to physics and for a player like me, this is unacceptable when trying to play a skill game, aiming for a high score.
Fun
I've played this game for several days and I just cant seem to get into it. Aside from the problems with the ball physics, the table itself just seems very ordinary and there really isn't anything about it that gets you hooked on the game. The game has 2 ramps and a few skill shot areas. One of the ramps rolls the roulette table for you and the other takes you to the minigame. After getting to the mini game I found it to be really boring, as it was literally just lighting up a bunch of numbers over and over before a timer runs out and I found that 6/10 times trying to get to the area, your ball would be ejected directly into the exit hole before you had a chance to swipe at it.
Rolling the ball up the other ramps/skillshots/etc.. gives you some points and begins to trigger other modes in the game, but you sort of feel like everything on the table is the same and that you're just doing the same thing over and over.
Its this lack of diversity in sound, things to hit, things to roll up, etc.. that really made this game "not fun" and just "standard" in my opinion.
Let me tell you this though, I'm not big on gambling and casinos so it is possible that someone who loves gambling/casinos/cards/etc.. may really be interested in this.
Price
The game is only $0.99 at the time of this writing. Overall the game isn't that bad but there are certain things about the game that really kill the entire experience, specifically the ball physics. And while the problems with ball physics don't plague the game at all times, the fact that there could or could not be a chance of the ball having a problem due to this makes it hard to pick this one up for a second and third round of play. I think it's fairly priced at $0.99, if you want to just check it out or you absolutely need every table on your iphone.
In the end, Pinball: Casino Madness is a fairly priced 2d pinball simulator for the iPhone. If you can forgive the occasional physics problem and lack of true pinball sounds and have a soft place in your heart for gambling/casinos you should check this out. If you're a pinball player and have some of the other games like pinball dreams, wild west, monster pinball, etc.. You probably won't find much enjoyment out of this one.
$0.99 6.8MB
http://www.mindcrank.com/reviews/rev_pinballcasino.png http://www.mindcrank.com/reviews/rev_pinballcasino1.png
http://www.mindcrank.com/reviews/rev_pinballcasino2.png http://www.mindcrank.com/reviews/rev_pinballcasino3.png
http://www.mindcrank.com/reviews/rev_pinballcasino4.png http://www.mindcrank.com/reviews/rev_pinballcasino5.png
So people have been saying some nice things about Pinball: Casino Madness lately. It has supposedly gotten a price drop and update, so I decided to skip over some of my reviews to give this one a chance.
Graphics
When you first load up the game, you are met with a nice splash screen, almost neon lights looking sign spelling out the name of the game. You are then dropped directly into a demo of the table that mostly reminds me of the demo you see before playing wild west pinball. The camera rotates around, zooming in on key areas of the table and I think its a good way to inspect the table before playing. Looking at the table itself, it is very easy to distinguish the different areas, decals, and get a sense of what the table is all about.
The table and table graphics themselves, are all 2d, or some sort of flattened 3d, but I'm fairly certain it is 2d.
You'll find a nice roulette table smack dab in the middle of the table, with cards, chips and other gambling related decals strewn about the table. Aside from this, there are several ramps for the player to aim at, one of which, leads to a secret area with a mini game.
When you hit the screen with your finger the first time, you are presented with a nice interface that "slides" in from the sides of the screen reading New Game, Options and an icon that, at first, was hard to tell what it did, but hitting it once changed the rotation of the screen, nice!
The table features an LED style score overlay at the top of the screen which displays various status messages and of course, the score for the game. When playing the game the graphics light up when hit, paddles are easy to see as they are the brigtest possible yellow a human can see and generally, this game makes it very easy to see whats going on.
I don't know what the framerate of the game is, but while playing the ball and camera move in synchronous smooth motion and I didn't experience any choppiness, save for the choppiness that happens in all games when you go through tunnels on a train and it has to reconnect to 3G.
Sound
The game features a fast paced new agey sounding soundtrack which is comprised mostly of a light backbeat and some simple instruments at the top level making the soundtrack sound like fast paced trancelike elevator music. All in all, the music sits in the background and you will find yourself rarely taking notice of it, which is good.
The sound effects in this game seem to be lacking in the "ding-ding" sense of things. While the sound effects definitely remind the player of a pinball table they are mostly "thud" and "thunk" sounding. When you expect a "ding" sound effect while hitting a pin, you are met with a "thunk" and I really found that this took away from the pinball experience as a whole. So much so, that I found myself getting bored with playing the game, since there was nothing fun about the sounds, nothing "satisfying" like I describe with other games.
In the end, the sounds in this game aren't bad, but they aren't really that good either. It is sufficient to say that they "fill the need for sound in the game" and nothing more.
Handling
Let me start off by saying the game has good presentation value, the game loads very quickly and the interface to actually get you into the game is somewhat polished. When you actually start playing the game, it seemed like some funny stuff was going on behind the scenes.
The ball moves around at about a medium pace, when you hit the ball with your paddles, its not very hard to AIM or put force into the ball. What I did find though, is that the ball physics when you're not hitting the ball are inconsistent. You hit the ball, expecting it to go up and to the left for example, but halfway up it turns to the right for no apparent reason. At some points, you want the ball to "bounce" off something it had previously bounced off, yet it doesn't. I won't go too much into the problems that I faced while playing, but the fact that this happens at all, really killed the game for me.
I also found that certain skill shots didn't always work. Sometimes the ball would hit the entrance to a ramp for example, only to be repelled away by some invisible force. Either the graphics and physics aren't synching up or theres a physics problem with the game itself.
Another point of confusion was trying to actually get the ball on the playing field. One would think you take your right thumb and roll it along the bottom right of the screen ( where the ball is ) to launch it, but upon inspecting the instructions I found its the opposite. You have to roll your thumb along the top of the screen to actually get the ball on the playing field and this didn't make much sense to me but once I understood this, getting the ball on the table wasn't a problem.
One last thing to mention is the mini game. There is a mini game you can access if you hit a certain ramp. Its basically a mini pinball table where the goal is to light up all the numbers at the top of the mini table, each time you do this it resets the 15 second timer and you get another chance to light up the numbers again.
In the end, the game handles fine but there is some funny business when it comes to physics and for a player like me, this is unacceptable when trying to play a skill game, aiming for a high score.
Fun
I've played this game for several days and I just cant seem to get into it. Aside from the problems with the ball physics, the table itself just seems very ordinary and there really isn't anything about it that gets you hooked on the game. The game has 2 ramps and a few skill shot areas. One of the ramps rolls the roulette table for you and the other takes you to the minigame. After getting to the mini game I found it to be really boring, as it was literally just lighting up a bunch of numbers over and over before a timer runs out and I found that 6/10 times trying to get to the area, your ball would be ejected directly into the exit hole before you had a chance to swipe at it.
Rolling the ball up the other ramps/skillshots/etc.. gives you some points and begins to trigger other modes in the game, but you sort of feel like everything on the table is the same and that you're just doing the same thing over and over.
Its this lack of diversity in sound, things to hit, things to roll up, etc.. that really made this game "not fun" and just "standard" in my opinion.
Let me tell you this though, I'm not big on gambling and casinos so it is possible that someone who loves gambling/casinos/cards/etc.. may really be interested in this.
Price
The game is only $0.99 at the time of this writing. Overall the game isn't that bad but there are certain things about the game that really kill the entire experience, specifically the ball physics. And while the problems with ball physics don't plague the game at all times, the fact that there could or could not be a chance of the ball having a problem due to this makes it hard to pick this one up for a second and third round of play. I think it's fairly priced at $0.99, if you want to just check it out or you absolutely need every table on your iphone.
In the end, Pinball: Casino Madness is a fairly priced 2d pinball simulator for the iPhone. If you can forgive the occasional physics problem and lack of true pinball sounds and have a soft place in your heart for gambling/casinos you should check this out. If you're a pinball player and have some of the other games like pinball dreams, wild west, monster pinball, etc.. You probably won't find much enjoyment out of this one.