As someone who both loves pinball and is relatively poor, Zen Studios’ series of pinball games have been both a blessing and a curse. They easily make the best virtual pinball games on the market, but I have never been a huge fan of their business practice of releasing a few tables at a time, re-releasing their games, and picking and choosing what you can import between versions. As of this writing, I’ve bought every Marvel table at least twice. I will admit, Zen providing me with full access to this game did ease that wound a little, but I would much rather them just bundle every table into one package and that be that. It’s still cheaper than acquiring and maintaining a normal table, but it’s annoying nonetheless. Is Pinball M any different? Only time will tell.

You may be asking, how is Pinball M different than the standard PinballFX series? Well, the initial lineup features tables based on horror themes… and then Duke Nukem for some reason. This was a strange addition, but a welcome one since it’s one of the best, if not the best area of the package, but we’ll circle back to that when we look at each table individually. Now, you’re probably thinking that this isn’t new, we’ve already got tables based on the Alien franchise among others, but no, these feature blood, pixelated strippers, and enough swearing to put the M in Mature.

The game includes one free table, Elder Gods: Director’s Cut, which as you can guess is a tribute to the works of H.P. Lovecraft. I would argue this table alone being free is worth at least sampling, whether you’re a pinball apprentice or wizard. This is one of the prettier outings in the package set in a Victorian manor as one of the Eldrich beasts descends upon it. The other, premium options include the previously mentioned Duke Nukem, The Thing, Chucky, and finally one based upon the popular video game Dead by Daylight. 

Initially, I was a bit put off by the fact that these are separate downloads outside of PinballFX, but the bonus features here make up for the tradeoff of losing just a little more space on your hard drive. Each table has a corner of your hub area that you can customize from top to bottom by either cashing in tokens from your level acquisitions or completing a “campaign,” which is essentially just placing different modifiers on your game such as limiting the number of flipper presses, time, balls, or a rapidly degrading score; you can add little touches such as signs, 3D renderings of key characters, or replicas from their respective properties to each area that make it seem like the ultimate man (or woman) cave. There’s also the fact that this game spams “shit” and “fuck” ad nauseam, meaning it’s not for the kiddos.

Outside of the campaign, there are plenty of different modes to keep you busy and really allow you to customize your experience beyond the cosmetics. If you’ve played the other entries from Zen Studios, everything you know and love returns, including the hot seat mode where you can pass the controller back and forth with other players locally. There are also daily challenges, tournaments, and upcoming events to look forward to.

All of the tables look great and could easily be filed under “this could be a real physical table” or “there is no way in Hell someone could make this work in real life,” no in-betweens. My only complaint with their designs is that out of the five options currently available, only the Dead by Daylight one has any higher-tiered flippers within the default table, and it was my least favorite of the group. Sure, your ball might be transported to some secondary area that has a few, but it would’ve been nice to have some longer tables with more bumpers and targets as opposed to having to complete the standard table objectives to progress into these special situations. These encounters are, as usual, the high point of the Zen experience, and the Duke is easily the best in this area. This tasks you with shooting aliens in the first-person mode as you use the flippers to turn and the shoot button to shoot your guns.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for the audio. I can’t confirm this, because the credits are missing anything related to the voiceovers, but most of them are pretty terrible and my astute hearing would only wager that Duke was either ripped from one of the original games or recorded by the legendary John St. John. The others all sound bored, lack inflection, or just sound downright horrible and stand out even more when you hear the same lines repeated over and over, some of which are meaningful dialogue from the property, and in The Thing‘s case, take the experience down a few notches. This makes me sad because out of the offerings, it’s my favorite real-world property. I am so tired of hearing Great Value Keith David and Kurt Russel swear like they are twelve and just learned R-rated swear words, repeating them like a scratched CD – it makes it really hard to revisit the table. I wish if we couldn’t have gotten the lines recorded by the original actors, they would’ve gone the Lego Jurassic Park route and held a Talkboy Radio up to a VHS recording of the original movies.

From a gameplay perspective, it’s what you’d expect from Zen Studios if you’ve played any of their other pinball games. I experienced a few framerate hiccups, usually during some pretty extreme multi-ball games, as well as a few of the areas feeling like they regularly drop the ball right into the dead zone between the flippers giving you zero chance to save yourself. This is also a severe case of bs that you deal with in physical tables too, because they need to eat your quarters, but it would’ve been nice to not have to deal with that.

If you’re a pinball fan, Pinball M is yet another worthy addition to your catalog, even if it’s just the free base game. With the additional tables being offered in a package or a la carte, you really don’t have an excuse to not at least give them a try. Unless that excuse is a severe hatred for microtransactions or possibly losing your content later.

8 out of 10

Pros

• A Respectable Amount of Content
• Varied Gameplay Modifiers that Fight Off Repetition
• The Duke Nukem Table

Cons

• Occasional Framerate Issues
• Dead Zones Feel Entirely Too Big
• Atrocious Voice Acting

Pinball M was developed and published by Zen Studios. The game launched on PC, PS4, PS5, X1, and XSX. The game was provided to us for review on XSX. If you’d like to see more of Pinball M, check out the official site.

 

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