Pinball FX Review (PC)

As balls fly around the table, I am trying to hit the location that will allow me to silence the 88 German gun currently threatening my platoon. But there’s enough going on that I am flailing and I quickly reset my approach to keep as many of them in play as possible.

It takes time to learn all the features of a pinball table and how to best angle trajectories to have a decent chance of hitting them at will. Practice is a good way of testing ideas and trying out combos. But only during actual play that it becomes clear how much there’s to learn about Band of Brothers and their steel ball-powered adventures.

Pinball FX is developed and published by Zen Studios. I played on the PC using the Epic Games Store. Gamers can also pick up the base experience for free on the Xbox Series X and S, the PlayStation 5, and older platforms from both Sony and Microsoft. The company is planning to launch for the Nintendo Switch before the end of spring.

The game is the latest evolution in the long-running franchise, designed to show how pinball can evolve in the digital space. It features both tables based on classic real-world machines and a lot of content centered around well-known intellectual property, including Star Wars, Marvel, My Little Pony, and Jurassic World. It’s a massive package with a lot of content to choose from.

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There are three entirely new tables gamers can pick up: Borderlands: Vault Hunter, The Addams Family, and Brothers in Arms: Win the War. Zen says that it will increase the number of available tables to 120 before the end of summer.

There’s no real narrative in pinball but the tables themselves, especially the ones centered on massive fictional universes, are crammed with a lot of characters, references, and fan service. I played a lot of the Homeworld table because I love the series of space-based strategy games. The associated table incorporates the theme perfectly, using missions to guide players to targets, and featuring concepts, factions, and ships from the universe.

Borderlands: Vault Hunter puts Claptrap front and center but also reflects the mix of seriousness and humor that the series is known for. The Addams Family uses Thing in some very cool ways. Brothers in Arms: Win the War struggles the most with its theme but still has plenty of interesting World War II touches.

Pinball FX adds a meta-progression layer with the Pin Hall, which players can customize using unlockable collectibles connected to the tables. Gamers need to reach score thresholds to unlock them, which meshes well with the core gameplay.

At its core, pinball is a very simple activity. But not an easy one. Use the flippers and nudges of the table itself to keep the ball in play for as long as possible, while also scoring as much as possible. Players have to understand the layout, see how they can open up big points options, and constantly refine their approach.

But there’s a lot of variety in the design. There are sometimes additional flippers to work with. The skill shots require different approaches. Missions are opened up in innovative ways. Multi-ball opportunities open up in a variety of ways.

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Pinball FX offers a full guide for each of the tables, filled with details on its mechanics and how gamers can engage with them. Players can choose to discover everything on their own but there’s always the option to hit a key and read about what you can do and how each feature can be approached.

Playing pinball, even in this digital form that does not constantly eat coins, can become frustrating. When that happens switch to another piece of content or simply move to practice for a while. But most of the time, Pinball FX is charming and challenging, appealing to anyone who loves the idea of pinball and wants to interact with many tables that explore the genre's possibilities.

The game can be downloaded for free, with trials offered for most tables. A Pinball Pass opens up 75 of the 86 tables available at launch, with the others delivered as downloadable content packs.

The title currently has limited multiplayer, in the form of tournaments created by players using a wide range of options. Zen Studios says that it will introduce a Pinball Royale mode during spring, allowing up to 64 players to compete with one another, although the full details are not yet available.

Pinball FX might be unable to recreate the feeling of playing a pinball machine in a dark bar with friends but it comes as close as possible. The development team has showered every table with a ton of attention, including as many details as possible, especially for the licensed ones. Some of them are hard to take in in the middle of some hot ball action but do take a moment to look around and marvel at the craftsmanship.

Equal attention has been paid to sound design. There are some small variations in quality but both the music and the effects reflect the intellectual property. Claptrap, from the new Borderlands table, is just as annoying as he is in the game. The soundtracks are good but can become a little repetitive when players focus on one piece of content for a long time.

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The Good

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