A drop of silver approaches the stage...
While streaming Akira Psycho Ball and getting irrationally upset about the second table, I started wondering "what if I were playing Flipnic instead?" The eternal question, one that I find myself asking often. Doing my taxes? "Wouldn't it be nice if I were playing Flipnic?" Scrambling to find my fire extinguisher as smoke pours out of the dryer duct? "Coulda' been playing Flipnic!"
Since I recently picked up a PS2 and went through the process of configuring Free McBoot to play games off a hard drive, I figured Flipnic should be one of the first to go on the thing. However, the desire for Flipnic was so powerful and all-consuming that I wound up buying a CIB copy instead. You know, just to own Flipnic. Just to be able to look at my shelf and say "Ah, that's a Flipnic," to absolutely no one other than myself, like a lunatic. I'm in bad for video pinball, and this is ultimate pinball, so how could I not?
Flipnic is a very unique take on video pinball, one that is acutely aware of the potential the medium provides to break established conventions of pinball. Why have one table when you could have, like, nine interlocked tables accessible through specific lanes and events? Why not introduce tunnels, rollercoaster ramps, experience points, rods with their own gravitational pull, status effects that increase the size of your ball bearing, and a jump button? Have you ever had to feed monkeys bananas and shoot down UFOs in the middle of a pinball game? I doubt it!
Each table has its own mini-games and objectives to complete, with a few being required to progress to the next table. For example, the first table will have you attract butterflies to specific bumpers in one section, which triggers a waterfall in the central area to freeze over. Once it's frozen, you have to break the ice by hitting it with your pinball several times, then climb the mountain and take on a boss that looks like something out of Rez. Inbetween each table is an "evolution" boss battle, which has you smacking your pinball against some sort of protozoic entity as it shifts between different stages of its evolution. It's all very trippy, and that's one of the main draws of Flipnic. Its surreal, tranquil nature puts it on equal footing with games like Tetris Effect, which is pretty much my go-to point of comparison for "meditative games," it seems.
That's not to say Flipnic gets every experiment right. The third and fourth tables in particular are kind of lousy, and between this, Sonic Spinball, and Akira Psycho Ball, I'm starting to appreciate the fact that these four-table games have a near perfect split in terms of quality. Table three needed another couple passes in the design phase. Navigating between each section is confusing, at times just plain frustrating, and its gimmicks are patently uninteresting. It's a low point for sure, though table four, which is fashioned after Breakout, is conceptually more engaging but squirrely in practice. I also encountered a weird audio issue on table three that caused the soundtrack to glitch out into a cacophony of high-pitched wailing. Some reviewers have cited crashes, too, but I did not observe any during my time with the game. It definitely feels like Flipnic needed a few more months in development, in any case.
This might still be my favorite video pinball game, though. The aesthetic and mood it invokes is unparalleled in its genre, and not enough pinball games play around with the freedom being a video game provides. You can still find it relatively cheap on Ebay, so if you're into collecting sixth gen games, you should definitely consider adding it to your collection, and despite its shortcomings I would still highly recommend Flipnic to anyone with passing interest in the Playstation 2's library.
While streaming Akira Psycho Ball and getting irrationally upset about the second table, I started wondering "what if I were playing Flipnic instead?" The eternal question, one that I find myself asking often. Doing my taxes? "Wouldn't it be nice if I were playing Flipnic?" Scrambling to find my fire extinguisher as smoke pours out of the dryer duct? "Coulda' been playing Flipnic!"
Since I recently picked up a PS2 and went through the process of configuring Free McBoot to play games off a hard drive, I figured Flipnic should be one of the first to go on the thing. However, the desire for Flipnic was so powerful and all-consuming that I wound up buying a CIB copy instead. You know, just to own Flipnic. Just to be able to look at my shelf and say "Ah, that's a Flipnic," to absolutely no one other than myself, like a lunatic. I'm in bad for video pinball, and this is ultimate pinball, so how could I not?
Flipnic is a very unique take on video pinball, one that is acutely aware of the potential the medium provides to break established conventions of pinball. Why have one table when you could have, like, nine interlocked tables accessible through specific lanes and events? Why not introduce tunnels, rollercoaster ramps, experience points, rods with their own gravitational pull, status effects that increase the size of your ball bearing, and a jump button? Have you ever had to feed monkeys bananas and shoot down UFOs in the middle of a pinball game? I doubt it!
Each table has its own mini-games and objectives to complete, with a few being required to progress to the next table. For example, the first table will have you attract butterflies to specific bumpers in one section, which triggers a waterfall in the central area to freeze over. Once it's frozen, you have to break the ice by hitting it with your pinball several times, then climb the mountain and take on a boss that looks like something out of Rez. Inbetween each table is an "evolution" boss battle, which has you smacking your pinball against some sort of protozoic entity as it shifts between different stages of its evolution. It's all very trippy, and that's one of the main draws of Flipnic. Its surreal, tranquil nature puts it on equal footing with games like Tetris Effect, which is pretty much my go-to point of comparison for "meditative games," it seems.
That's not to say Flipnic gets every experiment right. The third and fourth tables in particular are kind of lousy, and between this, Sonic Spinball, and Akira Psycho Ball, I'm starting to appreciate the fact that these four-table games have a near perfect split in terms of quality. Table three needed another couple passes in the design phase. Navigating between each section is confusing, at times just plain frustrating, and its gimmicks are patently uninteresting. It's a low point for sure, though table four, which is fashioned after Breakout, is conceptually more engaging but squirrely in practice. I also encountered a weird audio issue on table three that caused the soundtrack to glitch out into a cacophony of high-pitched wailing. Some reviewers have cited crashes, too, but I did not observe any during my time with the game. It definitely feels like Flipnic needed a few more months in development, in any case.
This might still be my favorite video pinball game, though. The aesthetic and mood it invokes is unparalleled in its genre, and not enough pinball games play around with the freedom being a video game provides. You can still find it relatively cheap on Ebay, so if you're into collecting sixth gen games, you should definitely consider adding it to your collection, and despite its shortcomings I would still highly recommend Flipnic to anyone with passing interest in the Playstation 2's library.