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First off, I honestly don’t listen to music, so I don’t know much about KISS...However, I do know that you could easily take the KISS name off of this game, and remove the images of the and members from the tables, and you’d have just a normal pinball game. There is no KISS music as you play, there are no cutscenes, all there is their images on the two available (and very, very boring) tables. In other words, it’s just a very poor pinball game with no real association with the band listed in the title.
Next, let’s talk about the gameplay. I’d rather not, honestly...But let’s talk about it anyway. This game is fast-paced...But too fast paced for the camera. The camera is constantly trying to keep up with the ball, but it often fails. There also seems to be timing issues here. I have never ever had problems setting up ‘shots’ in any other pinball game I’ve played...But, for some reason or another, I can’t set up anything for the life of me. I hit the trigger and it always seems as if I’m off...Normally, I’d just attribute it to me being terrible and needing more practice, but when I gave it to a few friends to try, they experienced the same issues that I did. The game also seems to like to do two things; one is place the ball right between the two paddles so that even if you wildly trigger them, you’re not going to connect and the other is that it likes to not launch the ball sometimes when the paddle is triggered...instead, it rolls onto the other paddle, and rolls down beneath the one you had triggered, effectively causing you to lose your ball. The boards are also WAY too colorful...You can’t distinguish what your ball will bounce off of and what it won’t since there really isn’t a contrast between the two, so you’ll launch the ball and suddenly have the ball hurled back at you when you’re not expecting it. It happens a lot and it always feels very cheap.
Graphically....It doesn’t look good, even for a ten dollar game. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone successfully emulated this game on Super NES hardware and kept all of the imagery intact. Granted, games aren’t all about graphics, but when a game is this much of a stinker, a little eye candy would make me feel less terrible for playing it. As far as audio goes, like I said, there is absolutely no KISS music in here....But, there is one good option here that prevents me from giving this game an even lower score; custom soundtracks. Yes, custom soundtracks in a Playstation One game. To do this, once the table has loaded, pause the game and eject the CD. Then put in a CD of your choice and follow the instructions that appear onscreen. It’s a neat feature, and it felt nice playing KISS Pinball while listening to Wesley Willis, but ultimately not neat enough to make me feel like I didn’t waste my money by purchasing this game.
What we’ve got here is a KISS game that KISS fans will be disappointed by and a pinball game that pinball fans will be disappointed by. The only good thing about the game is the neat, unique ability (for its time) to have custom soundtracks as you play...But when you don’t want to play the game to begin with, what’s the point? There are just way too many problems with this game for it to create any sort of enjoyment for the person playing it. The only enjoyment one might have with this game is throwing it in the trash and watching the garbage truck take it away from your life forever. KISS Pinball came out at ten dollars new...I found it used for under a dollar, and I still feel as if I paid way too much.
2/10
