A great pinball game with a Metroid theme and a DS Rumble Pack.
First impression starting from the title screen is amazing. You see a colorful title and hear great music from a game I consider to be almost perfect. Practically all music and sound effects are recycled from Metroid Prime, but that is not a bad thing in any way. In fact this is the reason why Metroid Prime Pinball´s music and sound effects are just brilliant. Same can also be said about the graphics: they are gorgeous. Lots of details in different pinball tables and also weather effects in some of them. Frame rate stays solid all the time. This is a very good looking Nintendo DS game.
Gameplay is actually pretty simple since this is a pinball game. You need to use only the shoulder buttons and the stylus, which you use to shake the table in order to prevent your ball going down the gutter. Controls work just like they should work. Both DS screens are in use and of course there´s a blind gap in between them. Luckily the psychics are solid so the ball behaves just like you would expect it to behave so you get used to this blind gap after a while.
There are 13 different minigames which you trigger pretty frequently during gameplay and they help to bring at least a little variety into otherwise pretty standard pinball game experience. All minigames of course have a name with Metroid spice in it, for example Wall Jump, Phazon Multiball and Metroid Mania.
Difficulty is surprisingly high if you are not used to play pinball games. There are no save stations anywhere so when you get “Mission Over” the game always starts from the beginning. This can be annoying since you need to play and play and play using those same a handful of tables before you can proceed. This is where that great first impression wears thin actually pretty quickly.
DS Rumble Pack is included and it makes your DS rumble occasionally during gameplay. It works well and is a cool little feature, but by no means you are missing something vital if you decide not to use it. Luckily there are other games supported by DS Rumble Pack so you can use it for example in Metroid Prime: Hunters and Starfox Command.
There is also a wireless single-card download play for up to 8 different players. The object in this mode is to score 100 000 points before your opponent does. Battles are fought using Magmoor Cavers table and just like everything in this game it works just fine, but gets boring very quickly.
Metroid Prime Pinball is a worthy of purchase because of its Metroid theme and the DS Rumble Pack. It would also be advisable to be at least a little fan to different pinball games.