SlamIt Pinball: Big Score

The Good
Apparently, the pinball game genre is not dead! I picked up Big Score for its low price, mainly because I was nostalgic about good pinball games I played in the past. I was delighted to see a new one being released, and was happy to support the small Serbian development team who obviously put a lot of effort into it. In the end, I was still surprised at how good it actually is, and how much fun to play.

The table looks and feels great. It achieves or even surpasses the visual quality of the Pro Pinball games, while being not pre-rendered but in real-time 3D. Of course it is easier to achieve photo-realism in a pinball game than a huge open-world adventure, but I was still impressed at how palpably realistic everything feels. You've got your basic ball reflections, realistic flipper movements and sound effects, a LED display that reflects on the tables glass cover and all that for sure. But the game really starts to grow on you visually once you start hitting those targets and the whole table is flooded in the triggered lights. That was when I realized that I had never really seen a pinball simulation that felt so close to the real deal.

There's one other feature that makes you forget you're not playing a physical pinball machine: nudging and bumping the table like you've never done in a video game before. According to the developers, this was the idea that got development started, as reflected in the game's title. The gist of it is that you don't nudge the table by pressing some predefined keys for hitting the table from the left, right, or front. Instead, you just mash your keyboard on the side you want to nudge - any keys! You think those old-school sports games, which made you hammer away on your Return key to run, were bad for your keyboard? Try playing SlamIt for a while. You'll be beating the hell out of your keyboard to save that ball from dropping into the out-lane. All this is accompanied by a very satisfying shake of both the table and the camera, so it really feels like you're physically rocking the table. You might want to hook up an old keyboard if you're known to get really caught in the action, but one thing's for sure: breaking your computer was never so much fun!

I also really like the table layout. I'm a pretty average pinball player, and I'm sure there's much that I still haven't discovered yet, but from what I could see there are a lot of missions to choose from and accomplish. In the beginning you can even choose, according to the bank heist theme of the table, whether you want to play on the side of the thieves or the cops, although I didn't notice huge differences in gameplay. From what I've seen, the missions remain about the same, they just sometimes have different names. If you lose a ball and get a second chance, you might either get lectured by your gang boss who probably just bailed you out, or by the police chief - mostly superficial differences. You'll have to assemble your team, gear up, drive the car to the scene, avoid traffic, rob the bank or catch the thieves, and so on. I also liked that the music, which is some nice pumped-up electronic Rock playing throughout the game, changes when you start a mission, and that every mission has its distinct theme. After a while you can just listen to the music to remind yourself of what you're supposed to do. The targets are naturally all kept in theme. There's a prominent safe combination lock in the centre of the table, a bank vault, and of course two strippers to make up the slingshots. I mean, what kind of heist movie doesn't have a scene at a strip club?

You've got several camera modes and positions to choose from. These are great to show off how cool the table looks in all its 3D glory, but are not necessarily suited for serious gameplay. The camera will flip and tilt and zoom where the ball goes, and it is all very effective in demonstrating the details of the table and the beautiful effects. You will probably try it out occasionally and use it to get others interested in the game, but the actual playing will most likely happen in static camera mode. You would also do good to have a large monitor with a high resolution. I am currently playing on a 19" TFT with a maximal resolution of 1280x1024 pixels, which makes it really hard to make out what's written on the lights and targets, especially in the middle of gameplay. Since version 1.2, the game can also be run in pinball-conforming portrait mode. There are scenes in the official trailer of people playing it on an epic 30"-something monitor, standing on the floor and flipped 90°. If you have that kind of equipment, it might just make the game that little bit more awesome and realistic, and a sure killer if you have some friends over.

An Internet high-score ranking is almost a must for a game of this type these days, and SlamIt doesn't disappoint. It was actually so simple and hassle-free that at first I was wondering whether I was doing everything right, but my scores showed up on the website no problem. When you register for an account at the official site's forums, you will choose a unique player name. Once you have activated Internet scoring in the game's options menus, you will always be asked to enter an additional Internet nickname after finishing a game. If it matches the player name you registered, your current high-score will be updated on the game's website, which apart from the world standings can also be filtered by country. Not many people have submitted scores by now though, but I hope that will still change.

The Bad
The few negative things I found in the game are mostly of technical nature. Most notably, the menu controls are somewhat counter-intuitive. For example, Escape is used to pause the game. Every other game would probably return you to the gameplay if you pressed Escape again. Not so in SlamIt, though. Pressing Escape will ask you whether you want to quit the game - you have to press Return to select the default resume option if you want to continue. A couple of times already I have quit the game when I just wanted to resume play, and I seem to be unable to learn that I have to press another key. I guess others will have some trouble with that as well.

More annoying though is name entry. I respect the possibility to keep the simulation realistic by allowing you to choose your letters with the left and right flippers. But it would be very comfortable if in addition, you could enter your name regularly using the keyboard. Additionally, I would prefer to have a way of erasing the last letter if I made a mistake. Not being able to do so can be really annoying if you just reached your new high-score, and you mess up while entering your Internet ranking name.

Your virus scanner might act up on an executable called Trap.exe that comes with the game. This little program is used to catch and block the usual Windows interrupt keys and combinations like the Start key or Alt+Tab for task switching. It ensures that while you bang your fists on the keyboard to nudge the table, you will not accidentally leave the game. Although the program is benign, many security suites will rightfully detect this as intrusive behavior. You can either add an exception for the program, or if you don't want to do that just remove the file. Since patch 1.2, the game will also run if Trap.exe is not present. You will just have to be a little considerate in what areas of the keyboard you mash to a pulp.

I encountered serious performance issue with V-Sync enabled on Windows 7 64-bit. However, if you're going for high scores, you will be playing in the static camera view, where tearing is a non-issue anyway, so you can just disable V-Sync in the game's options to get rid of the problem.

Finally, and this could even qualify as a spoiler (although anyone who plays the game for more than 15 minutes will find out), I found that the traffic driving LED game had the potential to be fun, but ultimately wasn't. The problem is that in all three short stages, the pattern of traffic is exactly the same, and after playing the bonus game a couple of times you will have it memorized and collect the 31 million points every time in a rather mind-numbing way. A little randomness would have made a great difference.

The Bottom Line
I can unreservedly recommend this game to anyone who ever enjoyed a pinball game, or likes to play real tables. It's the best thing to come along since the venerable Pro Pinball series, and the closest you can get to the sights, sounds, and feel of playing an actual table at your next bar or arcade. While there's only so much you can do to improve on pinball games, the control concept of SlamIt is really innovative and, most importantly, great fun. Together with the fact that everything else that makes up a pinball game has been executed close to perfection, and that it sells for a ridiculously low price, it's hard to find a reason not to give it a try.