Pinball of the Dead - Review

Zombies Prefer Pinball of the Dead
BRAAAAAAAAAAAAINS!

House of the Dead is probably one of the most venerated on-rail shooter series ever to bless us with its presence. Chances are, if you go to your local bowling alley or pizza parlor, there will be a House of the Dead arcade cabinet around the corner. When you've got a franchise like this, there's always the temptation to throw together a spin-off title and see how well it does. These can range from awesome, as is the case with Typing of the Dead, a re-make of the original House of the Dead where keyboarding skills take precedent over itchy trigger fingers, to meh, as is the case with Pinball of the Dead for the Gameboy Advance.

In Pinball of the Dead, you'll be playing through the events of one of the House of the Dead games. Don't ask me which one, though, because, honestly, do you need a story for a zombie pinball game? The game consists of fairly typical pinball action with the addition of flesh-eating monsters are various other unpleasantries. You'll rack up points in a fairly typical way over the course of three boards: Wondering, Movement, and Cemetery. The boards are all multi-level and fully functional, but they're not all created equal, Wondering lacks color or variety, and Movement gets old quickly. Of the three, I prefer Cemetery simply because of how populated the board seems with bumpers, switches, and lights. It looks better and seems to be more enjoyable.

Pinball is one of those genres that's surprisingly hard to pull off: if you've ever played pinball in real life, you know what pinball “feels” like. When games don't get the physics right, it's very easy to notice. Unfortunately for Pinball of the Dead, the developers didn't quite get things right. There are tw speed settings for the ball, but even the fast option leaves the ball moving at a snail's pace, but even that can be inconsistent, with the ball suddenly speeding up or slowing down for no reason. The hit detection seems to be a little off on the flippers, too, as sometimes the ball will fly off in the opposite direction. In general, the physics just aren't right, and in a game that relies on predicting where something will go, you need to have consistency.

The game isn't all that pretty to look at, either. Keeping in mind the age of the game and the platform for which it was released, it's still not a beautiful game. The graphics aren't terrible, but they're undefined in the way of that awkward transition between all 2-D and 3-D capable consoles. The music isn't anything special, and the sound effects are similarly unexciting. The voice acting is fairly well done and not overused. It actually seemed like the sort of one liners that might be delivered from the speakers of a pinball table. A saving grace, if only a small one.

By this point, you might be thinking that I'm going to conclude by trashing the game and saying that you should probably purchase something else if you want to get a pinball fix, and while this may be true, don't dismiss Pinball of the Dead out of hand. This is the sort of game that grows on you -or perhaps more aptly, creeps up on you- and when you start to get into it, it's not all that bad. I found the whole to be greater than the sum of its parts, but that might not be the case for you. I would be lying if I said there aren't better pinball games on the Gameboy Advance, but I wouldn't be lying if I said that there are few with more character.

--Tom