Pinball time is here once more, but this time with a little more feeling.
The inclusion of rumble is a small feature that’s absent from almost all Android games and it’s an easy feature to forget about until you play a game that includes it. Home console games have had some form of haptic feedback  for nearly fifteen years now, allowing gamers to feel getting shot or sliding off a road by vibrating the controller in different ways. Enzo’s Pinball is Haptify’s first game using the MOTIV development platform which allows these effects to be brought to Android. You’ll feel slight vibrations when the ball bounces off a wall and get much larger kick as the ball bounces between bumpers. This haptic effect leaves other games feeling a little flat. Enzo’s Pinball really is a showcase for this technology that goes beyond being a simple tech demo, even though this won’t be the best game of pinball you’ve ever played.
There are three tables to choose between and they’re all traditional style tables that’ll fit completely on your device in portrait mode. Each of the table themes: Clockworks, Steam and Turntable DJ have little variety between them beyond the visual and audio changes. Each table’s bottom half is practically identical with a single unique feature up at the top such as the DJ table when you can spin the record at different speeds. Things aren’t all bad though, the physics are fine and there’s OpenFeint integration, multiball and accelerometer based table bumping which all help spice things up a little. It’s unfortunate that there really isn’t a stand out table, without any crazy rails, lights or other features you’ll find more interesting real pinball tables that came out half a century ago
It would have been nice to see a game such as this release for free with just a single table and just release the additional tables for a small fee just to drive up interest in the haptic technology. The vibration does feel a little over used in places but it’s a technology that’s been sorely missing from games such as NFS:Shift and Modern Combat 2 and hopefully this will change for their sequels, as long as it’s used sparingly. It’s also worth noting that some actions do trigger a very subtle vibration and some phones may not respond to all the nuances and they’ll be even less noticeable if you have an internally padded case for your device.
Enzo’s Pinball is a passable pinball simulation, but the lack of variety in the three current tables makes the $1.49 price tag hard to justify.
