With the recent release of Fallout 4: Anniversary Edition for Switch 2, Bethesda is back on Nintendo devices in a big way. If you’re a pinball fan, that way is even bigger thanks to Zen Studios’ Pinball M – Bethesda Pinball.
Yes, the M stands for mature, which amuses me to no end. The ESRB wants parents to know the included tables—Fallout, DOOM, and The Elder Scrolls vs. Skyrim—contain varying degrees of blood and gore, strong language, and violence. So, if you tend to play your pinball at school or at dinner parties with your parent’s boss, go with the Pinball FX version of this package. There, the strong language becomes just plain old “language” and the violence becomes “fantasy violence.” “Use of alcohol and tobacco” gets added, though.
I really don’t understand the ESRB.
Anyway, pinball. Zen splits their offerings into two categories: digital simulations of real-life tables and original tables usually based on popular IPs. Bethesda Pinball falls into the latter, of course, taking cues from some of Bethesda’s most well-known games. In this case, that results in some positives and negatives.
The first game I fired up was Fallout 4, and was instantly amused by a perk selection system. Yes, Zen managed to work RPG elements into a pinball machine. You can select a male or female character (who stands off to the side while you play) and select from familiar perks that actually enhance the gameplay. And, as you progress, you can level up those perks. Of course, you can let the machine “roll your character” for you if you just want to hop straight into the flipper action.
This system is used to varying degrees across all three tables, and you can even select between difficulty levels. It’s not anything I would’ve ever expected from a pinball sim, but it’s oddly appropriate for the titles.
So are the designs and special effects. All three tables mimic the visuals and atmosphere of the games on which they’re based, and they do a good job of that. Fallout is industrial and clunky. DOOM has a hellfire landscape. The Elder Scrolls vs. Skyrim is all stone and snakes. In Fallout 4, you’re occasionally attacked by laser fire. In Skyrim, you’re attacked by dragon fire.
Basing the tables on franchises instead of real life machines gives Zen the freedom to have some fun with the designs, and how you feel about that will depend upon what you’re looking for here.
I’m a bigger fan of pinball in general than I am of these franchises, so I prefer to stick with machines I’ve played in actual arcades. Still, I acknowledge that I’d be all over tables with a Xenoblade Chronicles, Fatal Frame, or Fire Emblem theme. The major benefit to Zen’s original creations, though, is that they can design them for horizontal gameplay. The playing field in all three games feels a bit more vertically scrunched than with the Williams collections, for example, making it easier to play on the Switch. You can still orient the Switch vertically in handheld mode, but this remains a clumsy implementation that’s not worth doing. Also, the somewhat gloomy lighting that continues to be a problem for the new Pinball FX parent app feels more appropriate here.
After playing each table for a while, I couldn’t tell you which is my favorite. I’m a bigger fan of Fallout than the other franchises, but that table felt the clunkiest to me, making it a toss-up between the other two. But they’re all fun and surprisingly deep, especially considering the various RPG elements. In some cases, you even get to select what bonuses you want to aim for, like choosing to accept a side quest. Very clever and engaging.
And, of course, the typical Pinball FX features are all in play here. Zen’s bumper and flipper physics are fantastic, as always. Leaderboards, tournaments, and daily challenges give you incentive to keep at it. Practice mode gives you plenty of time to familiarize yourself with the tables and their “missions” (pretty much a requirement here considering the complexity of the challenges). And, of course, there are plenty of rewards to collect.
Whether this package is worth the investment, then, comes down to a few different factors. All three tables do more than enough to appeal to fans of these games; you can tell the designers are fans, too. And although the designs never really feel like actual pinball tables, that’s kind of the point. They’re a nice break from the look and feel of your usual Pinball FX go-tos. Finally, they’re fairly priced. Whereas some Pinball FX titles will cost you $10 for one table, here, you get three for $15.
So, I recommend Pinball M – Bethesda Pinball to Bethesda fans and to Pinball FX fans with enough tables to view this set as a break from the norm. If you’re just a digital pinball dilettante, however, there are collections more worthy of your quarters and time.
