Pinball FX Review (PS5) | Push Square

pushsquare.com:

You’d think Pinball FX – the rebooted pinball compilation from Hungarian developer Zen Studios – would be the least controversial release of the year, wouldn’t you? But this is the video game industry, and controversy is effectively its middle name. So, the studio has come under intense scrutiny for not allowing owners of its previous efforts – like Pinball FX3 – to carry forward their DLC. It’s a fair comment when you consider, despite being remastered in Unreal Engine, the meat-and-potatoes of the experience remain very much the same.

If anything, this latest effort mostly brings with it a bunch of messy monetisation schemes. The headline here is the Pinball Pass, which can be purchased in monthly or annual permutations. The idea here is that, with a single transaction, you can get access to almost all of the game’s included tables, which totals 86 right now. More importantly, the team is promising that a further 34 will be added through the summer, which is a lot of pinball.

But the annual pass retails for around £79.99/$99.99, which is an outrageous outlay, regardless of the quality and breadth of the content on offer. We fully appreciate that modelling these tables in 4K comes at significant cost and effort to the developer, but that figure breaks a mental barrier for us – it’s just too much for digital pinball, no matter how good and how much. You can earn some free daily passes through the new Events mode (more on that in a moment), but the subscription is a bust for us.

Apparently Zen Studios already knows that, though, hence it’s offering a more traditional a la carte DLC system as well. Many of the tables have been bundled together, allowing you to buy several at once, like the Star Wars Pinball and Marvel