Slayer Pinball. We’ll just let that sink in for a moment as the absurdity of these two things colliding may cause your head to spin.
Anywho, the pinball game landed on the Windows Phone Store over the weekend and fetches for $2.99 without a trial. Because of that we’re taking one for the team and we’re going hands on to let you know if it’s worth it.
Slayer Pinball is released by Sony Music, which is similar to Sony Pictures Television. That latter company recently released Wheel of Fortune and JEOPARDY! to Windows Phone also without trials. We’re not sure what Sony has against trials but it’s not because their games are bad—they’re just a bit overpriced (we actually really like JEOPARDY! and WoF a lot).
Slayer Pinball ain’t half bad—the graphics are good, stuttering is at a minimal and it has Slayer thrashing in the background as you play on what has to be the most demonic board ever. In that sense, as a straight up pinball game it’s a lot of fun.
Slayer Pinball: South of Good?
The downside, ironically, pertains to the music—it’s the same riff playing over and over again. And while it’s fun at first, that repetitive music gets old (like the band itself...zing!). What’s worse: there are no settings in the game. No volume control for FX or the music meaning you have to mute your phone to turn off Araya’s howling.
Then there’s that weird glitch (which you can see in the video) where the ball seemingly gets caught in the launcher, effectively killing your game. Since there’s no tilt control, you can't shake it loose—definitely an odd omission for a pinball game. Also high scores? Yeah, we’re not sure where they’re kept.
Conclusion? Slayer Pinball is one of those games we want to like. It looks cool and the actual gameplay is quite good. But the lack of audio settings, repetitive music and small glitches all prevent it from really shining. That’s a shame as Sony could do a lot more with this.
Because there’s no trial, we can’t really recommend this game. But if you do spend the $2.99, you will get some entertainment value out of it and it’s still better than some of the Xbox titles that are out there.
Pick up Slayer Pinball here in the Windows Phone Store.
Daniel Rubino is the Executive Editor of Windows Central, head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft here since 2007, back when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, Microsoft Surface, laptops, next-gen computing, and arguing with people on the internet.
