Don’t get too excited, there are no saucy stewardesses in Mile High Pinball, although play it on a plane and you’ll probably get a little sweaty and disturb your fellow passengers.
This action-packed pinball game has a nice concept – you’re fighting your way up a skyscraper-sized pinball machine that is, you guessed it, a full mile high.
Mike High Pinball can be quick in places but early levels are fairly pedestrian, with the traditional pair of flippers at the bottom of the screen and a sprinkling of static bumpers, roll-overs and traps.
As you progress, these evolve into animated targets and enemies that you need to defeat to head onwards and upwards. Keep an eye open for hidden levels, too. To help you on your way are a huge variety of power-ups.
These range from simple points bonuses and speed-ups to upgrades that reveal secret doors or tweak the ball’s behaviour with supernatural bouncing power, slow-mo falling or even multiple balls. Some power-ups can be earned just by accumulating roll-overs but it’s well worth seeking out the ‘store targets’ that let you take time out to convert your points into the exact abilities you’re after.
Gameplay is fearsomely addictive, especially when you fall back a couple of levels while trying to scale a particularly tricky barrier, but a game like this lives or dies on its physics. Mile High Pinball handles both naturally and fairly – when the dead-ball slot beckons, you don’t feel cheated – although it was a touch jerky on my N81.
Even after you’ve scaled the full mile, two-player and head-to-head Arena modes allow you to pit your pinball skills against a wider audience. In a word, wizard!
Details
Price: £4
Rating: 3+
Size: 15MB
Check out our Mile High Pinball gallery:
