Title: Pinball FX
System: Nintendo Switch
Price: Free to start (Tables Vary)
Release Date: 07/06/2023
Prelude
Zen Studios made some pretty good stuff for Pinball FX3, and I regularly throw a game of that on my Switch for some scorechasing goodness. So when I heard about the next game in the pinball line being a pseudo reboot, with cross platform leaderbaords, a new engine and no tables carrying over, I was definitely skeptical. After trying it out on Series X at launch, and I found Pinball FX to be miserable for a variety of reasons.
Still, this next gen focused Pinball game somehow came to Switch anyway, and being a fan of the last Pinball game on Switch, I decided to make this my primary platform and give several tables a spin, while also waiting for certain updates to go live and see how the Switch manages to handle this new engine and some of the newer tables that have launched since.
Presentation
Back in the Pinball FX3 review, I praised the general look and feel of the game, and how the tables looked great and the sound, while forgettable for the original table set, were still excellent for the Williams recreations, and I absolutely adored the vertical mode support, which made that port of FX3 my most played across all platforms. Even now with a table that launched early last year, the game looks stunning in handheld and docked, and I was so absorbed in my initial review of FX3 by just how fun the game was and how great it looked, that I didn’t even notice that the original launch of it on Switch lacked 60FPS support until much later, and even then, Zen went in and patched things up to make it a really smooth pinball experience.
Honestly, before the very day this review goes live, I was gonna barge in and say “and then they didn’t do that for FX”, because during the launch window on Switch, this game was a pretty blurry mess, with hard to read table text and annoying framerate hiccups to deal with. There was also the fact that the few returning tables from FX3 just looked worse in every possible way on Switch, which made it somewhat obvious why most of the tables available on Switch are completely new to the platform. Yet somehow, the game got a big performance and visual patch the day I was finalizing this review, so out with this old segment, and in with a newer take on how the game, while not nearly as gorgeous as FX3, does look significantly better both handheld and docked, and the fact the table text is perfectly readable now makes the experience a whole lot better now, especially if you have a flip grip to enjoy the game with.
That being said, the big knock I have with FX’s presentation is the whole UI. Gone are the slick, easy menus of FX3, and instead you have a replica pinball arcade you can customize with minor unlockables you obtain upon clearing a score threshold. So much stuff that made FX3’s menus charming are gone now, and instead you have a lifeless interface that while I didn’t mind customizing a bit at first with collectibles I obtained, I quickly soured on the idea when I booted the XSX version up for comparison and realized the main purpose for this gimmick is to sell you premium crap from the in-game store to decorate your room with.
The Switch doesn’t have this store or the awful Pinball Coin system yet, so you only get the stuff the tables have to unlock and from competitive seasonal events (which seems to have ditched the cross platform aspect every other version supports, since the Switch doesn’t use the same tech as the next gen versions), which I prefer a lot more than dealing with MTX nonsense, but that just further illustrates how silly this UI aspect is. It really wants to push the whole “buy more, spend more” nonsense that plagues modern gaming, and I really do not like it. At least an update made it easier to just jump into tables you own and not pay attention to the other UI nonsense, though the UI for the tables and modes got a lot worse too compared to FX3
Sound is fine. Outside of the Crypt of the Necrodancer table having some godlike renditions from the original game, nothing sticks out, though the recreations sound fine to me for Williams stuff, and old FX3 tables sound the same as they did in that game. I do like the main BGM for the game a lot more than FX3, which is the only thing nice I can say about this whole new HUD in general.
Gameplay
Pinball FX is a free to start game, not unlike that of prior Zen Pinball titles, and here you get a whopping three free tables to play! Honestly, this by itself is a great bargain, and one of them is a pretty good recreation of Williams’ Fish Tales, a table I like quite a bit. Each table has a few different modes to choose from, with the Williams tables having a “Pro” difficulty option allowing for more frantic pinball action, while everything in general has a normal default difficulty along with a mode that lets you toggle on powerups in a pinch to help with scoring. The flippers feel nice, the scoring is fun, and if you know a Williams table well enough in real life, you’ll be able to make good progress with it here in FX, though if I may be blunt, I didn’t notice any physics differences from FX3 to FX, at least for the two non williams tables included as freebies here.
By far the best bonus modes returning from FX3, are the ball challenges, where you can go in and play with a one ball challenge, a timed challenge, or a distance challenge, and set out to beat your score before those conditions run out. The one ball mode in particular is perfect for pick up and play action, and that’s the mode I easily jump into when playing any table for the first time. Of course, there’s your standard 3 ball play available as well, and each mode has online leaderboards to tackle, though unfortunately, cross platform leaderboards do not appear to be supported on Switch, likely due to the engine changes needed to get this game to run compared to the next-gen versions.
Still, I had fun messing with the leaderboards and going after friends, and the game continues to do a good job of letting you know if you’re approaching a friend’s highest record, making it a fun scorechasing experience. Sadly, a few modes from FX3 such as matchup are just completely gone, though some features such as the table awards still remain, and serve as fun incentives to master each of the tables and get better at them. On the bright side, custom tournaments make a comeback, along with a new seasonal events thing that most modern games like to incorporate, but I really didn’t mind the Events feature much at all once I gave it a try, as it feels like a mix of Matchup and Tournaments from the last game and was fun to dabble with for the tables I bought.
The trickiest sell for returning pinball fans will come from this game’s utter lack of cross-buy; previously on other systems you could migrate your tables from game to game, slowly working your way and seeing the tables evolve without having to constantly rebuy them, yet with FX Zen wants you to rebuy everything that it reissued, even if you’re on the same platform and own it on FX3. For Switch that isn’t much of a problem now since most of the tables here are new, but even on XSX, I found it irksome that I had to rebuy some old favorites yet again, and the fact not all of them have migrated yet makes me just prefer to wait for a sale on the tables I already bought a ton of times before like Pasha, (not available on Switch FX, but on other consoles) and just focus on the newer tables.
When it comes to said newer stuff, I found most to be pretty great when it comes to Williams recreations, but not so much for anything original. Most of the tables I was able to try on other versions (since Switch also lacks the Trial demo feature) just didn’t feel that fun to play or had as fun of a design as prior Zen originals, but the few exceptions like Crypt of the Necrodancer really stood out, and at the very least I can recommend that table without hesitation, as it easily serves as the best non-williams table available on the Switch version of FX. They also managed to finally get the Marvel tables on Switch after years of trying, which is awesome as a lot of these tables were the best part of Zen Pinball 2 back in the day. Moon Knight lives again!
Conclusion
In conclusion, Pinball FX is a bit disappointing on all platforms with a weird shift in focus, and somehow barely managed to make the Switch version tolerable despite all the issues it had at launch. The new Williams tables are great with some stellar picks for licensed tables, (Twilight Zone, Adams Family, and World Cup Soccer are masterclass and worth downloading the app for alone) but the newer original tables are rather bland and uninteresting, and a lot of the older stuff is just not here on Switch yet.
With how much of this new UI is geared toward garbage microtransactions and a subscription service, (neither are on Switch yet, thankfully) and just how this game was been a blurry, buggy, and boring mess for the past few months, I really found it hard to recommend Pinball FX in any form, but with today’s update making things a lot better, I can at least recommend it now for fans who want to use this game to buy the tables not on FX3; those still look decent and will get you lots of scorechasing fun, awful UI aside.
Still, I struggle to see how any of this is meant to be an “Engine improvement” over the spectacular FX3, which is incredibly hard to top even now, and it seems this is a rocky regress more than a natural evolution, with the two returning FX3 tables here not feeling different enough to warrant a rebuy if they weren’t free, at least in my view. At least the tables are on sale surprisingly frequently, and if you nab a quality table like Twilight Zone, even at full price you’ll be in for a great time, so just maybe back off the newer tables for now and see what else Zen has in store. Perhaps we’ll get goodies like a Shovel Knight table or a recreation of Terminator 2? I’d gladly brush aside my wrapper gripes for those, just like I did with Twilight Zone here.
I give Pinball FX a 6 out of 10.