One more of those pinball-based games made its appearance. It is even has pinball in the name (it's called Adventure Pinball) The game is announced as combining pinball, adventure and role playing and comes in old-school graphics and colour:
I watched the short video of the gameplay and I immediately decided not to spend the 2.29 euros: it is not a pinball. If you are interested in role playing you could perhaps find it appealing but if, like myself, you are a pinball fan, you can simply forget about it.
The title is somewhat misleading. I am not going to compare neither the two companies nor their whole product lines. I am going to focus on just one table I have been playing for the past week: Attack from Mars.
But first a statement. There is no comparison between the physics of Zen pinballs and that of the FarSight ones. Compared to the former the latter give an impression of clunkiness which, for the table in question is aggravated by the angle of the flippers that makes the control of the ball particularly unnerving.
The Zen table
As I said I have been playing the two versions of the same table and I have the impression that the point system is not the same for the two implementations. How would that be possible? Aren't the two versions supposed to simulate the behaviour of the real table? Still, I am obtaining systematically higher scores on the FarSight table. My personal bests are at around 8 billion for the Zen version and 12 billion for the FarSight one.
The FarSight table
One thing that I do appreciate in the FarSight layout is the possibility to adjust the table view. I like vertical tables (I was a big fan of the LIttleWing tables) and FarSight offers an angle of view which, while not being a view from above, is much better than the Zen fixed, "perspective", view.
Which table do I prefer? I haven't decided yet. For the time being, I am playing both, trying to improve my scores in both simulations.
I would have never believed that I was going to write a post where FarSight would have the upper hand in a comparison to Zen. Well, here it is.
Some background is necessary though. Three weeks ago I underwent surgery in order to repair a shoulder tendon (the supraspinatus, if you are interested in details). As a consequence my left arm was immobilised, with a very clever belt (it still is and will be for ten more days) and I could not play pinball. I was somewhat frustrated but then I remembered Safe Cracker. In this game you only lose the ball after the area shut-down when you are in sudden death. So I started playing SC with just the right flipper. It's not as funny as when you play with both flippers but it's better than nothing.
Now, Safe Cracker exists both in the Pinball Arcade and the Zen Pinball collections. I tried both, with, initially, a preference for Zen. However, as I kept playing I found that the FarSight version had definite advantages, in particular for someone who was losing the ball all too easily. For instance in the Pinball Arcade simulator the launch of the ball is always the same so that it always lights the same lane. One can thus rack up 5 minutes time extensions much more easily.
Also I like the angle of the PA pinball (in position 3). It gives you more of a bird's eye view and less of a perspective one. I prefer it by far. So this time FarSight is one-upping Zen (and, I know, this is totally subjective).
One more of those pinball-based games made its appearance. It is even has pinball in the name (it's called Adventure Pinball) The game is announced as combining pinball, adventure and role playing and comes in old-school graphics and colour:
