A gory-as-heck pinball game is a wild concept, but it works so well
Pinball is a workhorse genre in the world of gaming. It’s just always been there. Our 2600 or NES had a rudimentary but fun pinball game. The Pinball Game & Watch was always a personal favorite of mine. Every computer had pinball baked right in. It’s the everyman game. Zen Studios has been pumping out Pinball games since the dawn of the DS and hasn’t slowed down one bit. Their latest adventure in the world of digital Pinball is Pinball M, a series of Mature Rated themed pinball tables mostly filled with horror film licensed tables like Child’s Play and The Thing or games like Duke Nukem. Recently however they have released an original table theme called Camp Bloodbrook that is a blood splattered and cliche filled homage to the most famous slasher films of them all. No, it’s not a Friday the 13th table because god knows what is going on with those rights these days but it’s close enough.
There isn’t much to say about a Pinball FX table that hasn’t been said. Zen has the physics and feel of the real thing down pretty decent and they don’t get TOO crazy with unrealistic board gimmicks in this one. It’s an extremely well designed table that checks all the right boxes for the theme they were going for. The aesthetic really carries this particular table, and they did a great job with it. I love the gory machete. The lake that the killer dies in. The final girl. There’s swearing, there’s blood, there are horror elements galore; it’s all here. And we go through all of it and do all of the pinball trappings.
This is a hard thing to review, because it’s really good. It’s a really good pinball game. It’s funny to make a mature rated pinball game. The dev team was basically unleashed, and created some kind of off-kilter. It’s hard to make captivating original content pinball tables sometimes, but they’ve nailed it here. This is a fun little excursion in the world of digital pinball, a welcome addition to any system we find ourselves playing these games on.
This review is based on a Steam code sent to SideQuesting by the publisher. It originally appeared on The SideQuest Live for November 3, 2024. Images and video courtesy Publisher.
No Comments