I had decided not to publish any review of ASK Homework pinballs and in fact I did not review neither their Beast Master nor the collection of Art of Pinball tables, which contained the five already published ones plus a bonus, Fire Fighter. (I only regretted not having waited for the collection which would have allowed me to have six tables for the price of two).
What pushed me to rescind my decision was the appearance of a new pinball collection by ASK based on existing pinball machines, The Zaccaria collection. Zaccaria was a small Italian pinball company which produced a series of tables in the 70s and 80s before disappearing. ASK decided to revive these pinballs. In this first instalment one finds four tables: Locomotion
Time Machine
Devil Riders
and Pinball Champ
It goes without saying that I am not going to present exhaustive table-shots for the upcoming pinballs of the collection.
There is not much I can say for the Zaccaria pinballs. The table layouts are OK. I liked in particular the high-level board. The pinballs do not look modern but this is not a drawback to my eyes. Unfortunately the physics of ASK pinballs is not at all to my taste. One has a feeling of sluggishness which, in my case, makes me looking for the home button on the iPad in order to exit the game.
Two new Farsight tables made their appearance this week. Given the rate Farsight is reviving the old tables, one can start calculating how long it will take them to produce a digital version of all the tables that had ever existed. Well, enough with dreams and onwards to the review. The first table is a classic, Space Shuttle.
It's a fast pinball game with uncluttered playfield and quite playable, even with the Farsight "special" ball, thanks to the dark colours that dominate the playfield. I did like it a lot.
I also did like the second one, White Water,
but, contrary to the Shuttle, here the game is almost impossible to play, because of the combination playfield+ball. The former is extremely bright which makes the ball incredibly hard to follow. Time and again I found myself playing by just guessing the trajectory based on the portions where the ball motion could be distinguished over the background. It's a pity because White Water is a funny game and one that I would like to have the possibility to enjoy. As the game stands it is more stressing than enjoyable.
When is Farsight going to offer us a really well designed ball? That could be a special ball only available in the pro version, for instance. I would not hesitate to spend money for such a feature.
Today I received this in my mailbox:
Silverball Studios have now joined forces with Barnstorm Games and we'll be launching a 'Pro Pinball: Timeshock!- The ULTRA Edition' Kickstarter just as soon as we can. In the meantime, here's a WIP shot with all the ambient light turned off (you'll be able to do this in the final game too), which shows off the lamps and general illumination to the max.
Hope you like it!
You can be sure that I like it. I like it a lot. Timeshock is coming. Hurray!
