"Why won't this play?"

Ya see, I read about this little-known game in CGMag, so when I happened to see it...somewhere...I got it. I hadn't played a pinball game in quite awhile, but I love the type, and I like the twitch-action-styled gameplay. The last time I played pinball (in a video game or elsewhere), was as a minigame in my Dreamcast (OH! how i miss you, DC! You're gameplay and graphics--Soul Calibur, Sword of the Berserk, NFL2k1, Sonic Adventure--are still unsurpassed by anything the PS2-Xbox world has given us!) game Sonic Adventure. The Casinopolis stage was essentially three Sega-themed pinball games you could jump into (Sonic became the ball, leaving a gorgeous, long blue light trail behind) where you would earn money until you could ''buy'' your way to the chaos emerald. It was really fun to play and replay. So when I saw this in the ''Outta Sight'' section of Computer Gaming Magazine, I thought, ''hey, I'll look for it in the budget section.'' Then I thought, '''Advanced ball physics?' What makes it advanced? The ball is a theoretical point upon which Newton's laws of gravity and material-type-related laws of elastic collision apply! There's no difference between a 2D and a 3D version of pinball! '' But the screenshots looked good, so I gave the game a try.

I'll admit that I can't get Pure Pinball to run. But I think it's fair to give a game a failing score even though you can't play it...IT's a PINBALL GAME!!! How can it NOT run on a Radeon 7500-powered computer that can play Freelancer and Unreal Tournament 2003 without a hitch, and Unreal 2: The Awakening if all settings are on low?

Pure Pinball, with all its settings on low and poor-detailed, eats up all my system resources and gives me a black screen (with accompanying music) when I try and load a table.

Granted, maybe it needs patching, but
a) What kind of Pinball game needs patching?
b) If it won't run without an obligatory patch, it shouldn't have been shipped.
c) I can't find any patches available online. I don't think they exist...the company that made this game is unknown in the computer software (or even computer) world, and I don't think they knew what they were doing.

The game told me I needed Direct X9 (which I have)!!! DX9!! For PINBALL? The graphics in the screenshots do NOT look so good that DX9 is called for. It's just lazy, poor coding.

As for the game itself, all you get are 3 (!) similarly-organized tables, no options to add more content, and nothing you wouldn't find in a regular pinball arcade. I get the feeling the Casinopolis Pinball minigames in the Dreamcast's Sonic Adventure were more impressive. And for my money, I want more than three tables. Heck, for MY money, I want a game that actually WORKS!!!!

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 06/27/03, Updated 06/27/03