More pinball games. When will it stop? Probably the day after the last fighting, first-person action game and empire building strategy games are released. Philips' Psycho Pinball makes the mistake of copying others (mostly Epic Pinball) rather than doing anything particularly unique or interesting. There's nothing wrong with the actual execution; it's just that, after seeing about ten pinball games in the past three months, there has to be some unique quality in any new pinball game to make it worthy of attention.
The problem that Psycho Pinball shares with many of the games offering multiple tables is that it becomes quite obvious that most of the effort was put into one of the tables at the expense of the others. In this case, the centerpiece is the Psycho table. Here, even if the visuals aren't anything to write home about, the game starts to take off. There are plenty of targets, and best of all, you can jump to any of the other tables after a certain combination of targets are hit. This is well and good, until you actually try one of those other tables; once there, you're confronted with the mediocre Trick or Treat, Wild West or the Abyss.
The ball action is on par with most of the games out there, but one area where the game comes up short is the fact that the table scrolls. The problem with this û a problem that's shared with many pinball games û is that you can't plan your shots. It gets even worse when the multi-ball play is active. The scrolling stays fixed on one of the balls, and if the others leave the visible screen, oh well.
Other problems with all of the tables are a series of black hole areas where the ball disappears and suddenly reappears elsewhere, without any of the usual visual mechanical things to help you track the ball (rails, spinning things, that sort of thing).
In the end, Psycho Pinball isn't psycho (with the possible exception of those whacked-out clowns that appear after each table), or earth-shattering, just boringly competent. In that oh-so competitive world of computerized pinball, being competent isn't enough.
