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| | Gameplay
Sound
 | | Graphics
Value
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| | Publisher: Runesoft  Genre: Arcade | | | Min OS X: 10.4 CPU: Intel @ 1660 MHz RAM: 512 MB Graphics: 64 MB VRAM |
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SOUND As pinball games struggled with video games for arcade real estate, one of the great weapons in the pinball arsenal was the bombastic sound that was put in the later games. With booming voices encouraging or mocking you (trivia note: Apparently Tina Fey of SNL and 30 Rock fame did a couple of voices for Medieval Madness back in 1997-thanks, Wikipedia!), every bumper and target making its own characteristic noise, the rampant clicking of the flippers, the Thunk of the plunger or the free game, all topped off with pulsing beats or soaring orchestral themes, you could feel as if you were truly enveloped in the game. I'm sorry to say that DP3D doesn't exactly bring the noise. The voices are there, and add a great deal, but even when I cranked the game up there just wasn't that "Wall of Sound" I was hoping for. The music tends toward the noodly ambient, and worst of all, the bumpers don't ring or buzz! Inconceivable! It's not exactly silent, but the few sound effects that are there, while well-crafted, just seem wan and pale. The only cure I can imagine is to listen to whatever music you were into in the 80s and 90s REALLY LOUD on your headphones and that good old sleazy arcade/roller rink feeling will flood right over you. And maybe just for complete authenticity spill a case of Coke on the floor and never clean it up, and hire a guy to sit in the corner reading porn magazines and hand you some quarters when you give him a dollar. Ahh, those were the days! VALUE I tend to judge value on replayability, and this game offers a great deal of it. Between the table choices, the graphic options and the difficulty settings, not to mention the quests for all the secret ways you can rack up your score, there's a lot of play time here. Plus, thanks to the essentially random nature of physics (even as simulated) you're never going to play the same game twice-- it's pinball, not Quake 4, after all.SUMMARY Dream Pinball 3D is a very good but not great attempt to recreate pinball at the height of its glory. In my opinion, the makers of the game chose to reach for graphic glory rather than imaginative gameplay, and the game suffers because of it at times. I would have liked to have seen more advantage taken of the fact that it's a simulated world-- more multiple levels, more innovative tables, physics shenanigans and so on. But if you've been missing pinball this is a really great way to get that old feeling back.PROS • 6 different, imaginatively laid-out tables.
• Fairly spectacular 3D approach really puts you in the game.
• Graphic and gameplay options plus the essentially random nature of pinball give it a lot of replay value.CONS • Not all of the glorious 3D imagery is well-rendered and some of the static art looks unfinished.
• The game is not as fluid and instinctive as some other recent pinball simulators with more modest graphic aspirations.
• The sound effects and music are pale imitations of the sturm und drang of real 80s- and 90s-era pinball games.
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