Dream Pinball 3D First Look
We take a look at the Wii and DS versions of SouthPeak Games' upcoming pinball game.
SouthPeak Games and developer TopWare Interactive are hoping to make your pinball dreams come true next month with the release of Dream Pinball 3D on the PC, the Wii, and the DS. We recently had an opportunity to check out work-in-progress versions of the Wii and DS games, which we'd still be playing if they'd been left at the office after our meeting. That's because pinball games, provided neither their ball physics nor their table designs are broken, are generally a lot of fun. Dream Pinball 3D doesn't appear to suffer from either of the aforementioned problems and introduces an interesting feature or two to boot.
Dream Pinball 3D features six tables to play on, each with a distinct theme. Those that we saw during our meeting included a medieval table, an aquatic table, a monsters (zombies and vampires mostly) table, and a dinosaurs table. Apart from the different visual styles, each of these tables pose a different challenge because of their varying flipper, ramp, and bumper positions. All of the tables appear to have at least two flippers in addition to the requisite pair at the bottom. You'll control the flippers either with the DS's shoulder buttons or the Wii's B and Z triggers. The only other controls you'll need to use are the D pad to nudge/tilt the table and launching the ball, which is achieved with a simple button press on the DS and by pulling the Wii Remote toward you and then releasing the A button on the Wii.
One of the more interesting features of Dream Pinball 3D, which we didn't get to check out on this occasion, is that the properties of the ball you're playing with will change occasionally. The steel ball we were playing with behaved exactly as we expected. It'll be interesting to see if the balls made of wood, marble, ivory, and gold are just as realistic.
Another noteworthy, though not necessarily great feature of Dream Pinball 3D, is that you'll be able to choose from six "dynamic" camera positions, as well as a fixed camera that displays the entire table at all times. You can switch between cameras in the middle of a game, but we wouldn't recommend it. At least one of the dynamic cameras that we tried appeared to have some trouble keeping the ball in view at times, resulting in having us blindly hit the flipper buttons and hope for the best on more than one occasion. We hope that particular camera option will be fixed before the game ships.
Dream Pinball 3D is currently scheduled for release in March. We'll bring you more information as soon as it becomes available.
- GameSpot ScoreN/ANo Rating
Content you might like…
-
Pinball Hall of Fame - The Williams Collection Gameplay Movie 2
Firepower is re-created for the Wii, with incredible accuracy in this Pinball classic from Williams.
- May 27, 2008
Users who looked at this article also looked at these content items.
Images
- SouthPeak Games
- TopWare
- Pinball
- Release: Apr 22, 2008 »
- ESRB: Everyone 10+
Games you may like…
-
Gottlieb Pinball Classics
(WII) -
Pinball Hall of Fame
(WII) -
Pinball
(WII) -
Pinball Hall of Fame - The Gottlieb Collection
(GC) -
Pinball Hall of Fame - The Gottlieb Collection
(WII)
Users who looked at content for this game also looked at these games.
See More Similar Games
13 Comments