Dream Pinball 3D for Windows

To find this game was a surprise to me and as an old(er) gamer I keep fond memories of certain genres that fell out of favor long time ago. One of those is a pinball simulator for the PC and especially one that takes advantage of the "latest" technology. I mean, Pinball Dreams is one of those sadly missed games that started out strong (in this case on the Commodore Amiga) and then somehow got lost in PC world. The first contender to pick up where this all-time favorite oldie left a long time ago is a budget game that I purchased for just under $10. The price is mostly a reflection of how unpopular (or forgotten) the genre is right now. But it also shows that $10 can still buy an excellent game.

Without going into too much detail, this game is just what it promises. There are six realistic tables with a minimalistic interface. The realism goes all the way to rendering reflection off the glass and being able to choose between 7 camera angles. This is the point where previous versions typically fell short and the tables in Dream Pinball 3D look and "feel" very realistic. The minimalistic interface, however, is missing essential details or at least presence.

It is common practice to have the CTRL buttons activate the flippers and use SPACE and ALT to nudge the table. The shooting is done via ENTER key which is a bit unorthodox since it's normally the DOWN cursor. Dream Pinball uses the cursor to cycle through camera views (undocumented) just like the "C" key would do. So all in all, controls are very familiar and no major learning time is required. After all, it's a relatively simple to learn game too. (Getting good at it is a whole different question.) Unusual is the option to choose from four levels of difficulty which pretty much tweaks time settings and number of balls per game. Gameplay remains the same though.

The extras are in the details and with many trigger options, the modifiers and associated skills to hit the proper switches are within the scope of the best machines you can find in a bar or arcade. One extra that stands out to me is the ball lock feature which changes even the ball "material". This may be mostly to show off rendering techniques, but it's a reminder on what point multiplier level your currently in. Reminder is probably relatively cryptic, as you would have to remember that Marble is 10X but it certainly looks cooler than a simple display of "10X". Despite claims otherwise, physical properties appear to not change much, which would have been an interesting twist (... maybe).

The system requirements are relatively low, as one would expect from a budget game. It scales down for systems where no DX9.0c or Shader 2.0 is available. That should be only in rare cases as such technology is several years old (4?) and many computers probably are newer than that. Of course, setting all options to maximum (texture, resolution, HDR) requires actual 3D hardware (like Radeon or GForce) and may be a bit much for low-end laptops. Dream Pinball 3D runs smooth on my system, but I would expect that in light of the requirements.

Case: Termaltake Tsunami VA3400SNA
Monitor: Viewsonic VP201s
Motherboard: ASUS A8N SLI Deluxe
Processor: AMD Opteron 185 (equiv. to FX60)
Memory: Kingston HyperX DDR400 (C2), 2 GByte
Graphics card: ATI/AMD Radeon HD2900 XT
Sound Card: Creative Soundblaster X-Fi (not used)
Physics: BFG Ageia PhysX 128MB (not used)
Hard drive: Western Digital Raptor 74G SATA 10k
Operating System: Windows Vista Home Premium
DirectX: 9.21 & 10
Video Driver: Catalyst 8.4
Chipset: nVidia nForce 4
Resolution: 1600x1200, no AA

Overall, Dream Pinball 3D is a fun game for very little money that also fill a void in today's PC game offerings. Graphics and overall gameplay are great. A few shortcomings in the interface may be forgiven just like the fact that it really doesn't add much to the genre. In the end it's a rare game and works well if you like to push balls around.


2008, theuerkorn