Video Game Review
Pinball Heroes: Hot Shots Golf
Playstation Portable
2009
Developer: Sony
Publisher: Sony

Pinball really isn’t a hard concept to grasp for either the player or the developer. For the player, it is all about keeping the ball in play for as long as possible. For the table designer, it is all about making the table interesting enough to keep the player interested enough to want to both keep the ball in play and play again once the ball gets lost. Pinball Heroes: Hot Shots Golf by Sony is a result of the latter being lazy and the former not giving a damn. This game is as entertaining as watching paint evaporate. Reading this review will take more of your time then the amount you’ll actually want to invest in this game.

The premise is initially interesting. Although the table looks empty, your goal is to make your way to the center of the table which is called the putting green. In the way of the green, you have obstacles blocking the entrance. These obstacles have yard numbers on them and you need to accumulate enough yards before the obstacles disappear which then allows you to approach the fairway. Each time you hit an obstacle, it counts as one stroke. The idea is that you need to sink the ball in the hole on the green within par. You get bonus points if you finish a hole below par. There are also six ‘traps’ along the sides of the table which if your ball lands there, you will be assessed penalty strokes. Each hole has their own unique conditions on the table such as magnets pulling your ball to the sides (to represent wind) and different yardage requirements. There’s also an ability to gain power shots that will increase your ‘drives’ and slots where you get bonus points for loyalty and other things.

The idea of a Hot Shots Golf themed table for the upstart Pinball Heroes franchise was an interesting concept on paper but was horribly executed. The core fundamentals of the game are broken. This is a horribly playing pinball game. It feels like you’re playing a video game more than a pinball game. The controls are not always responsive and the button placement is weird. There’s no easy way to put the ball in play and sometimes takes multiple attempts. The ball feels extremely floaty. It feels as if they got their physics from a balloon rather than a small metal ball.

If the controls were a bad dream, the visual presentation is a nightmare. The issue stems from the ability to choose to play the game holding the PSP vertically or horizontally. Vertically seems like the obvious choice because it is the only option that allows you full view of the table. However, this option handicaps the button placement. The flippers are easy enough to use, but launching a ball or pausing the game is next to impossible to execute properly. The flipper buttons are assigned to the triangle and x buttons which make sense but the pause button is still the start button so unless you are in a position where you won’t have to use the flippers for the next couple of seconds, expect to lose a ball by pausing. The analog nub acts as your launcher but it’s in such an awkward position that if the ball hits in certain places, you might not have enough time to bring your hand back to use the flippers.

The control scheme is much better when playing horizontal but it is near impossible to play it that way. The game can’t show the entire table on one screen so it needs to scroll. The problem with this is that since the PSP has little height and a lot of width, the game needs to constantly scroll and it’s way too easy to lose track of the action. Instead of pausing the game for a split second between screen scrolls (a pause so short it feels seamless but just long enough that if you watch for it, you’ll notice the slightest delay) or scroll the action screen by screen to allow the player enough time to adjust, the game screen is always scrolling which can be very disorientating. It’s crucial in pinball to being able to track the ball properly and playing the game in this format makes it next to impossible to follow.

Considering the potential for this game, it goes to show how much of a disappointment the PSP is whent they can’t even get a pinball game right on the system. There is a chance you might enjoy this title but there’s an even greater chance you might throw your PSP across the room in frustration.

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