This is a decent pinball sim with some fun tables. But as a hardcore player it doesn't cut it.
First off, this is a great pinball game for people who casually enjoy pinball and it's a cool treat in pinball history if you want to see the evolution of pinball in the 80s and early 90s. Some of these old tables are hard to find, in fact, I've never played a Taxi machine in such great shape, so that was fun.
Now for the hardcore review. I have a couple little things that I do not like about the game, and although they are nit picky, pinball is a game of miliseconds and milimeters, 90% skill 10% luck (if you know what you're doing), and about 80% flippers, 20% table. So for a pinball game to satisfy a true pinball wizard, this game doesn't cut it, almost no pinball sim ever does. Here are my reasons:
1. Ball physics - The ball physics in this game are good, better than most. But from what I can tell there is no spin on the ball. Real pinballs are spinning a lot, really fast sometimes and it has a great impact on play.
2. Camera - I kind of like how the camera moves up when the ball is high on the table. You get a good look at the cool graphics on all of these tables. BUT... then when you get multiball, the camera becomes fixed because is has to. All of a sudden you're playing the table from a different look and it throws you off. Pinball is also a game of rhythm and pacing, this camera throws it all off. I would have no problem with this if you could change the camera, but you can't. Although this is the best moving camera I've seen in a pinball game, cameras should not move in a pinball game.
3. Nudging the table - The Wii Remote seems to be the perfect controller for nudging and I was excited to try it. It just doesn't work the way it should. Sure, you move the Wii Remote or Nunchuck and the table moves, but in a wierd way, almost random or too quickly, I can't put my finger on it. All I can say is you can't push both controllers forward and expect the table to be nudged forward, it does, but it's just off. In other words, what you would use nudging for (Saving the ball from the outlanes or going straight down the middle) doesn't work.
In the end, this game is fun and simple. You can play with 4 players and it actually has goals to progress through before you can unlock everything in the game, which is cool. It explains each tables rules for you very clearly, I actually learned some things I never knew from that. But if you want a hardcore pinball simulator, this won't feed your hunger.
And although these are cool real tables, a couple of them are really old, not too exciting and may only have appeal to older people who played them in the arcades. When it comes down to it, they really need to make a collection of late 90s machines (Attack From Mars, Addam's Family, Medieval Madness, Theater of Magic, etc.) Those games are so great, so exciting and so fun and funny they might actually create some new fans of pinball. Is there a reason people aren't recreating the best pinball machines ever made?
Nothing beats a real pinball machine, but if you really need to play a pinball simulator, the Pro Pinball series is the best ever made.