G.G Series: Air Pinball Hockey

Genre: Pinball / Arcade

Players: 1

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Review:

Air Pinball Hockey is a Pinball game that incorporates elements of Air Hockey that was released on the Nintendo DSi via the DSiWare service in 2015, as well as being made available on the Nintendo 3DS eShop. This game replaces the flippers of a pinball table with an air hockey mallet, and the pinball itself gets replaced with a puck.

The presentation here is okay, but somewhat lacking. The pixel art 2D visuals are sufficient, but bland, and the energetic background music is repetitive and highly annoying. Overall this gets the job done, but it’s far from anything interesting.

When it comes to the gameplay, I love the idea of replacing pinball flippers with an air hockey mallet, but the execution here is just terrible.

Firstly, it was an extremely bad call to take something as tactile as an air hockey mallet and having players move it around using the D-Pad – the Circle Pad can be used instead, but there’s no analog control here, and even if there was it still leaves the obvious question of why this game doesn’t use stylus controls.

Secondly, the tables you’re playing on are small, bland, and uninspired. They’re almost not even really pinball tables, they’re just an enclosed space with targets you’re supposed to be aiming for (using the game’s poor controls, so good luck on that).

Thirdly, the physics here are absolutely atrocious. Sometimes the puck will even seemingly thrust itself up against your mallet, as if trying to push through it while to try to swat it away. However, the really dumb thing here is that this game doesn’t have the gravity of pinball to pull down the puck, but it also causes that puck to gradually slow down… but never stop. Yeah, I don’t know what the deal is with these physics, but what this amounts to is that every now and then the puck will just get trapped in the middle of the board, very slooooowly careening back and forth between two walls, only eventually getting moving again if it happens to eventually come into contact with a bumper or something.

The result is a game that’s inconsistent, frustrating, and just plain not fun. Don’t waste your money on Air Pinball Hockey. While it has a good seed of an idea here, it’s so poorly executed that even the tiny $2 price tag will seem like money you wasted.

tl;dr – Air Pinball Hockey is a Pinball game that replaces the flippers and ball with an air hockey mallet and puck. It’s a great idea in theory, but in practice it’s absolutely ruined by poor controls, bland tables, and terrible physics. Even at $2, this game is not worth the price.

Grade: D

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