Act: Invasion [by Wildsnake]

Game: INVASION
Release: November 14, 2003
Genre: Action
Developer: Wildsnake
System Requirements: 200 MHz, Microsoft® Windows® 98/NT/Me/XP/2000, 32 MB of RAM, 20 MB hard disk space, Microsoft DirectX® 3.0+, 1MB video card
Price: $19.95


Hybrid game designs are nothing new. While mainstream game developers are usually the most obvious culprits of the questionable desire to cram multiple genres together (“let’s make a first person shooter that’s also a real-time strategy game!”) this technique is also rapidly becoming a staple of the indie community.

Invasion Pinball by Wildsnake Software is exactly what you would expect from the title, a combination Space Invaders / pinball game. Your paddles occupy the bottom of the screen and where there would normally be a bright, colorful game table there is instead a space background and an onslaught of alien ships. The idea is to destroy wave after wave of enemies and boss ships while keeping your ball in play as long as possible.

Both pinball paddles have a health meter that is reduced each time they are shot and if it drops to zero your paddle becomes damaged and then ultimately destroyed. To counteract this you have the really cool ability to launch an enemy's bullet back at them if you time your paddle just right. You don’t have any real control over how the shot is aimed but at the same time it at least prevents you from taking damage. It's a tough skill to master but an essential one, especially when you are taking on boss ships and it only takes a couple direct hits from them to damage your paddle.

Since the nature of pinball gives you very limited control, especially against moving targets, you don’t necessarily have to kill all the enemies to advance - just survive long enough for the timer to count down (except for in boss battles) after which the attack wave simply flies away. Occasionally when an enemy ship is destroyed they release a power-up that can be collected, including health repairs, extra lives, multiball, shield, fireball and more.

The Wildsnake team has produced a few respectable pinball games but unfortunately the concept just doesn’t seem to work in this particular product. As an experiment, the combination of Space Invaders and pinball sounds interesting but the end result is a game that probably won't appeal to fans of either genre.

Graphics: 7
The in-game graphics for Invasion Pinball are quite good and though pre-rendered they effectively give the impression of a true 3D environment. The object and enemy animations are smooth and the developers have managed to achieve decent graphics performance for a game that requires such low system specs.

On the down side, the enemy ship designs are somewhat generic and lack visual variety. The enemies do change from level to level but their appearances aren’t varied enough (with the exception of the boss enemies) and so the ultimate feeling is that you are fighting the same ships over and over again. Also the title menu looks good and matches the game style but certain functions like options and the high score table use a generic Windows pop-up that looks cheap and feels out of place.

Sound: 6
The sound effects in the game are of good quality but sparse. With the complete absence of game music the only consistent sound is a “space hum” background noise. While this is more effort than many independent developers put into their sound design it’s still bad news for the player because there are points, especially between attack waves, where that is the only sound you will hear. Other than a voice-over that announces collected power-ups and status, the remainder is a handful of general laser and explosion effects.

Gameplay: 7
The paddle and nudge controls are responsive and I didn’t notice any bugs or performance issues. The Invasion Pinball base system requirements are very low and it ran smoothly on every system I tried.

Concept: 6
I have to give the developer a few points for what is (as far as I know) an original concept, even if their execution of that concept has fallen a little short. I’m not sure of the value of hybrid design as a philosophy, ultimately I'd take a well executed clone over a mediocre yet "original” hybrid game.

Options: 6
The player has access to resolution and bitdepth controls but strangely those controls are labeled “low", "medium" and “high” with no indication of what resolutions or bitdepths are in use. It probably goes without saying that the resolutions are 640x480 up to 1024x768, I've just never seen them presented that way. There are slider controls for overall game and sound effects volumes as well.

While the player can control the difficulty level, there are no other gameplay modes and no ability to choose levels. Each time you play Invasion Pinball you must start from the beginning and play until you die, with no ability to continue afterwards.

Fun: 5
The combination of pinball and Space Invaders, it ends up, is much like those all-in-one appliances you see at Wal-Mart (ie. combination TV/VCRs) in that you end up with is a product that satisfies neither requirement adequately. The play area is too sparse and boring to be any fun as a pinball game and the pinball element makes killing the enemies too frustrating to satisfy as a Space Invaders game. The lack of any alternate game modes (or pinball game "tables" for that matter) and the inability to continue makes the gameplay a one-trick pony that gets old too quickly.

Overall: 6
Think of the last time that you saw a pinball table - what comes to mind? I see a brightly colored play area with flashing lights, lots of obstacles and interesting sub-goals, an animated score display and a loud, almost obnoxious soundtrack. None of those things are present in Invasion Pinball.

Had the price point been lower I could have probably recommended this game as a novelty but at $19.95 (or roughly 80 games on a real pinball table) the cost is just too high for such limited gameplay and appeal. The overall rating puts Invasion Pinball as a purely average title and unfortunately, one that I am not able to recommend. If anything it just kept reminding me of how much I wanted to play regular pinball.

Perhaps the saving grace is that people who download the demo for Invasion Pinball will have the opportunity to grab the another, far superior pinball game from Wildsnake’s website. I commend Invasion Pinball as an original gameplay experiment but one that, like Frankenstein’s monster, I hope they don’t repeat. Fans of pinball should download and play Soccer Stars Pinball from Wildsnake instead, you will have much more fun.

Added: January 30th 2004
Reviewer: Kyle Nau
Score:
Hits: 3028
Language: english