User Rating: 2.4 | Pure Pinball XBOX
As a pinball player since the late 70s (in both physical and video forms), I've played more than my share of marginal video pinball games. When I saw this game on the shelf at $20, I was ready for mediocrity. But I was completely unprepared for the utter awfulness I faced. First, let me quickly mention the game's positive features. Yes, the game looks reasonably good -- though you'll regret some of that detail when you try to follow the ball through the pixelated mass of bumpers, ramps and lanes at the top of the tables. The music isn't awful, though it's repetitive and cannot be customized. And there are four tables to choose from, meaning that you're likely to have at least twenty minutes of gameplay before you can no longer stand any of the four. Now for the bad news. There are essentially two kinds of video pinball games out there. Some games attempt to realistically simulate a physical pinball machine, with all its limitations. Others try to accentuate the "video" part of video pinball, with aliens running across the playfield and such. Both varieties have their charms. Pure Pinball attempts to be an enjoyable, reasonable simulation of physical tables, and fails in truly spectacular fashion. A modern pinball machine doesn't just use its dot-matrix display and sound effects to entertain the player; it uses them to tell the player what do so. Pure Pinball almost totally neglects this basic step. Only the flashing playfield lights (which are sometimes difficult to see or read) tell you what shots are active at any given moment; and when several shots are lit, there's nothing telling you which is most important. The in-game help system (which is only accessible when the game is paused) gives only a few hints for each table, and the manual has no useful information whatsoever. The game verbally announces things that have no need to be announced (like each ball rescued by the ballsaver during multiball), and doesn't announce things that desperately need to be announced (like the object of modes). And the modes themselves -- when you manage to figure out how to start them -- are boring and repetitive. As a result, the game manages to be simultaneously unapproachable to novices and fatally dull to experienced players. The game in general and the interface in particular are crippled by limitations. Only 1-player games are supported. The controller layout is terrible -- the flippers are controlled by the triggers, which becomes painful after only a few minutes of play -- and can't be changed. High-resolution video modes aren't supported (and you'll very quickly wish they were). Sound effects can't be changed. Adjustable difficulty levels? Forget it. Whenever you attempt to leave a table (a worthy endeavor to be sure), you'll be warned that your unsaved gameplay will be lost -- a terribly odd warning, given that there's no way to save your gameplay in the first place. And when I had the audacity to change the camera angle, every attempt to access the settings screen after that displayed the foreboding error "The settings file appears to be corrupt. Press A to delete this settings file." Thankfully, even the bug had a bug, and pressing A actually had no apparent effect. One can only wonder what the alleged "QA testers" were doing -- perhaps polishing their resumes, or just giggling at the spelling and grammar errors on the now-loading screens. Finally, the game theoretically has Xbox Live support -- fortunate, since it's the only thing they can claim to support other than "Players 1" in the ubiquitous feature checklist on the back of the box. But even here -- assuming you would be willing to publicly admit to owning the game in the first place -- the game is crippled to the point of unusability. You cannot use voice chat. You cannot download content. In fact, you cannot actually play the game with anyone online. You can only upload your high scores -- whether you like it or not -- to the global scoreboard. Consequently, I am now publicly listed as one of the top 15 players in the world on one of the tables. I can only hope that I can someday live down the shame. 
