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Metroid Prime Pinball Review
Written by Señor Cha Cha on Friday, October 21, 2005
Fantastic pinball action and a phenomenal soundtrack.
Dual Screens + Gap in between them= Totally not cool
Metroid Prime Hunters isn't coming out until 2006 but you can still get your fill of Samus in Nintendo and Fuse Games' Metroid Prime Pinball for the Nintendo DS. With Mario Pinball Land under its belt and much more powerful technology to work with, Fuse has managed to successfully merge pinball and Metroid and created a wonderful game that's not only extremely fun to play but to listen to as well. They've even added force feedback with an included rumble pak that slides into the GBA cartridge slot, further immersing me to such a degree that the title's shortcomings are hardly noticeable. That is, unless I'm playing for too long.
Just as Mario was the star in Pinball Land, Samus takes center stage in her DS adventure by transforming herself into a morph ball and allowing you to use her to rack up points. There are ramps, flippers, bumpers, and the other standard issue things that one should expect in a pinball game, yet there's a slick sci-fi charm the series is known for. In all, the developers have done a masterful job integrating Nintendo's timeless series with standard issue pinball, but being a student of history, I'm already aware that it's not the most original of ideas. For everything this game does right, there's a much older game that features the very same thing. Devil's Crush for the TG-16 is amazing because it allows us to destroy demons while we play, and Sega's Pinball of the Dead lets us annihilate zombies with our ball while we jam to the quality soundtrack from the Dreamcast classic, The House of the Dead II. No, Metroid Prime Pinball isn't shockingly fresh. Rather, its developers have taken those old school designs and paid homage to this cool stuff by bringing it into the current generation. Spread across both screens, Pinball's boards truly shine, featuring Samus' space craft, marauding enemies such as space pirates, triclops, and parasites, and the overall attention to detail is just remarkable. Snow slowly floats to the ground, ice shatters, waves of enemies consume the top screen, rain pelts the alien landscape, and other cool effects light up the screen. This is, dare I say it, the most gorgeous portable pinball game ever made.
It also helps that the gameplay is spot on and somewhat familiar. The core mechanic, to rack up as many points as possible by aiming your ball with your flippers, remains, and the designers have borrowed from those aforementioned titles and injected their game with numerous action sequences. One, called Multiball, causes three Samus' to appear on the screen, allowing you to rack up triple the points, while others such as Shriekbat Shootout let you take control of Samus in her normal form and guide her laser canon from left to right as she decimates battalions of monsters. There are about 13 of these mini games, each of which poses a new challenge, and all of them help to keep things thrilling. Wall Jump, for example, allows you to leap across the screen using the L and R buttons. It has a bit of a learning curve, but again, it's just the developers trying to do something different that's supposed to remind us that we're playing a Metroid title.
The included Rumble Pak is another interesting feature. Shaped like a standard GBA cart, it provides satisfying jolts as Samus smacks into things. You can certainly play without it (and you can turn it off from the Options menu), but it's actually quite effective in simulating how it would feel to be playing on an actual pinball machine. It does make a bit of sound on its own, a very light boodaboodaboo, but it's not especially bothersome providing you're not playing next to an adult with sensitive ears (and a grumpy disposition).
When you first boot up the game you're presented with three modes of play: Multi Mission, Single Mission, and Wireless Mission. Multi is the heart of Metroid Prime Pinball, a way for you to unlock the small handful of boards so you can replay them in Single Mission. As for Wireless Mission, it allows you to wirelessly compete with up to seven other people using a single cart. It's not the meatiest of game modes (whoever reaches the target score first wins), but it's a solid addition to the game and nice to have if you run into someone else with a DS.
Two things keep Metroid Prime Pinball from earning a perfect score: the damn gap between the two screens, and Fuse not taking this concept just one step further. The first is an issue that most of us can identify with, that being the blind spot that lay between the top and bottom screen. Samus as well as enemies disappear whenever they travel into it, and this makes the gameplay a bit frustrating because it can be difficult lining up shots. You just have to estimate where the ball's going to go and that's no fun at all. This flaw isn't crippling, but it's very noticeable. However, that's Nintendo's fault and not Fuse's.
The last issue I have with Pinball is its total and complete lack of a story mode/extra frills. With a game like this, where Samus can unroll herself, stand tall, and blast enemies to smithereens, there should've been some added mission objectives or cut scenes. A story could've definitely blossomed from this design and we could have had a full blown Metroid adventure, albeit in pinball form. Instead, there's only a few tables to unlock (the Phazon Mines and the Phendrana Drifts being two of them), and it didn't take me too long to see everything they had to offer. After that, the only thing worth achieving is a higher score. Then again, pinball is all about high scores anyway, so you'll have to be into pinball to get the most from this game, as the excitement of it being Metroid will wear off after a while.
Then there's the soundtrack, which is clearly the game's most spectacular feature. With music lifted straight from the Metroid Prime games, Pinball is an absolute joy to listen to. Fuse did a remarkable job here. The aural component is right up there with Super Mario 64 DS and Ouendan in terms of quality.
If I wanted to be an ass I could give Metroid Prime Pinball a 3/5 for lacking variety but that just wouldn't be sensible. A great pinball game doesn't need 25 different tables and a plethora of unlockable crap. All it needs to do is play well, and no argument can be made that Metroid Prime Pinball's gameplay is lacking. You hop in, you go for the highest score possible, and you jam to Metroid music. Thus, it's a cool game, a great addition to the DS library, and must buy for anyone who loves Nintendo, Metroid, their DS units, me, and/or pinball.
posted October 31, 2005