Elite Pinball HD is a Xbox Live Arcade Indie game.  The press release on this game totes it as “classic Pinball at its finest”.  Let met start off by putting it bluntly.  What I think NotPlanA subsidiary FrozenSoft’s Frozen North division meant was that the game is as classical as the pinball game found in Windows XP.   However, this game even fails to achieve anywhere close to how Microsoft Pinball looked and operated.

I love pinball, I really do.  It’s becoming an obsession of mine and after reviewing most of what Zen Studios has to offer, I guess you can consider me spoiled.  Let me tell you though that I spent a good amount of time giving this game is fair turn to shine.  It doesn’t shine though, in fact I do no know why the acronym HD is in the title of the game at all.  Sure, it may be outputting HD on my tv, but none of the graphics are near close to what is needed.  In fact, I cannot seem to figure out why the full table is displayed on only half the screen.  The ball becomes minuscule and almost impossible to see.  The art work needs improvement as well, but I’ll let that slide because game play always takes precedent over art.

Gameplay is horrendous though.  There simply seems to be none or little physics involved so instead of playing pinball you play gunball.  That is to say that the ball shoots around with such speed as a bullet.  If you can successfully hit the ball with a flipper I think you deserve an award.

Let me sum this up real quick.  Bad graphics/art.  No physics.  Not a pinball game but a virtual shooting range.  Okay guys, try again I guess.  For now you simply don’t have anything.  (Just make the game take advantage of the whole screen and throw in physics, okay?)