Reader Reviews

Flipnic (PS2)

by Neil Smith

The Pinball genre has been sadly very neglected on the PlayStation 2 format. Besides the budget priced Play it Pinball release, one would be hard pressed to name any other Pinball based PS2 title. So naturally the release by Ubisoft of the Japanese-developed Flipnic comes as excellent news for all you Pinball fanatics. The main thing to note about Flipnic is that is not a straightforward Pinball game. Instead the game's designers seemed to have topped up on the LSD and other psychedelic drugs and have come up with what can best be described as a Pinball Action Puzzle game.

The first thing one will notice when you start playing pinball is the nice straightforward primary coloured based menu system. There are four major Pinball worlds in Flipnic. In sequence they are, Biology, Metallurgy, Optics and Geometry. You first need to complete a set number of Red Mission tasks before you can complete a Pinball world and move on to the next one. You can have a time-based Demo look at the next Pinball World, if you have not yet completed the previous world.

Your progress is saved as you play Flipnic, so although every time you start a new game, you are starting afresh score-wise, the tasks though you may have completed in previous games still count. Although there are Red Mission, Yellow Mission and Blue Mission based tasks to perform, only completing the Red Mission tasks are essential to complete a Pinball World. Before you start a game, or even during gameplay, you can bring up the progress screen to see which tasks you have completed and which you still need to do. There is also a handy help feature for every task explaining exactly what needs to be done, and even picture illustrations are used. For example, Red Mission tasks include destroying a Crab UFO, or lighting four red power squares in 90 seconds, whilst the lesser Yellow Mission tasks include making a set number of lane changes or getting multi-ball started.

So far I've basically described what Flipnic's gameplay consists off. Playing the game though is not as straightforward mostly because the game designers have really gone to town to create as many diverse gaming experiences as possible. Each world is made up off a number of various pinball tables, of various complexity and variety. Some tables may have a number of bumpers, which you have to hit so butterflies appear on them, but in the mean while there is a realistic animated chameleon flicking his tongue to eat some of the butterflies if you take to long to complete this section.

On each section you need to hit a number of objects such as a coloured glass pane causing it to break, then a red arrow will appear indicating a place where your ball can be captured. If your ball is captured you have to option to either cancel the capture using your right flipper, or move on to the next section by flipping your right flipper.

There are also a number of puzzle-based sections, which don't look like anything pinball related at all. On the Metallurgy Pinball World, you will eventually come to what looks like an energy grid floating in space. Your ball will attach itself to a blue posts and circle around it. By pressing the right flipper you can launch your ball along one of four directions on the grid to navigate up and down the various 3D levels of the grid.

Many of the Pinball Worlds will appear very confusing the first couple of times you blame them, but soon enough you will start to figure out what exactly it is you are supposed to do. Of course knowing what you must do and managing to accomplish it are two completely separate things.

Flipnic seems to use the high-resolution graphics mode of the PlayStation 2 presenting you with a number excellent looking pinball tables to play. Ever thing has brilliant shine to it, and is smoothly animated without a hint of slowdown anywhere. There is also ample use of Matrix-like effects such as zooming in from your pinball view into the 3D explosion of an UFO for example. Flipnic's use of the music and sound is also really good. A male voice over will announce what you need to do at the start of multiball, whilst a very laid back female voice will praise you when you accomplish a set task. There are also some very weird video clips between certain tasks just to help add to the esoteric feel of Flipnic.

Flipnic also features a number of two-player modes, which are sort of a blend of soccer and pinball. For Biology the two-player mode is a take on Foosball and it is pretty addictive as well. By pressing you flipper button you make you coloured bumpers go either up or down. By doing this, you try and bump your ball into your opposing team mates goal. There are also some other two-player modes, one of which plays is a take on basketball and the other were you control paddles ala Pong.