Review written by Shaun Beane

A while back while I was reviewing Bounty Hunter (see the Bounty Hunter review) I realized that pinball was a perfect fit for a handheld. The most recent pinball title to hit the market is Young Paladin. The nice thing about having two pinball titles is that it will create better products for the consumer. Both publishers will try to out do the other. We, as gamers, win. Competition makes for better games. So I hope this is the beginning of two great games for the PPC's.

Unfortunately for Young Paladin, Bounty Hunter was the first pinball game on the seen, so the bar had been set pretty high. I still have Bounty Hunter installed on my iPAQ and continue to play it on a weekly basis. It's a great game, especially considering the small screen space.

Installation is a standard ActiveSync installation, as most games are these days. I installed Young Paladin on my CompactFlash memory card without any problems. ActiveSync does not report memory used for programs on a CompactFlash card, but CECraft's website lists 1.5 MB as the required space for Young Paladin. Anyhow, I'm pretty impressed with game developers and how much they can cram into such a small file size. This is obviously a good thing; smaller is definitely better when you only have 32mb of RAM.

Young Paladin takes about 7 seconds to load - not bad considering all the graphics and that this is the only delay.

The main menu consists of Start, High score, About and Exit. No options? That's what I thought, anyway. Why wouldn't they at least give me the option to toggle sound? Well, they do. A little yellow speaker is hidden in the upper left hand corner of the main menu. Tap the speaker to toggle the sound. How about speed or difficulty? No such luck.

Since there aren't any other options, I'll get right into gameplay. The board is well laid out. The graphics are nice and the sound is typical of an old style pinball game. The sound effects are also nicely done.

To start playing, on the iPAQ you'll press the Q-Start button (button 4). Pressing the button triggers the ball. No variation in power at all. The ball always comes out at the same speed, and usually follows the same exact path. The joy pad controls the flippers. Left and right direction control the appropriate flipper and pressing the joy pad activates both flippers at once - very nice! Using the Targus keyboard, the left and right arrows control the flippers. I couldn't find a key that activated both flippers.

While playing the game, tapping the screen will pause the game and display four options: resume, restart, quit to menu, and exit. Not exactly overwhelming options.

The biggest complaints that I have about Young Paladin are collision detection and repetitive movements. I started noticing right away that the ball would not react instantly to hitting an object or the flippers. The graphics would sometimes overlap slightly. For example, the flipper would appear to be inside the ball. Not good! Repetitive movements drove me nuts. When I first started playing, I was able to repeat the movement of the ball over 20 times! What is that all about? I can't believe CECraft would be so sloppy! Unrealistic ball movement killed this game.

If the ball lands in certain holes, you'll get bonuses, such as, Monster ball, which equates to just another ball bouncing around. This is a neat feature except that both balls seem to take on magnetic qualities. The balls would "stick" to the flippers and I had to use the flippers several times to get the ball moving again. Other times, the balls would move in a very odd direction. With most pinball games you can pretty much predict how a ball is going to move, but not with Young Paladin. The ball seemed to have a mind of its own and ignored gravity.

The game does have some really cool points to it. The ball saver on each side near the gutters returns the ball back into play. The only way to lose is have the ball go between the flippers. Also, the board is definitely attractive. There are lots of cool bumpers and ramps that make the game fun for at least a little while. Extra balls make scoring points much easier. There are different types of balls and some of them double points as they are scored.

With all of these drawbacks, I played on ... and on ... and on. The same board! Are you kidding me? This really became repetitive after a while. Why am I playing this game?! I determined that there was absolutely no replayability to this game at all! Yes it's fun to score an obscene amount of points, but what else is there to the game?

There was no help file that came with the installation file. This might be different in a retail version since I was using a reviewer's copy of the game. The help file can be downloaded as a Word document from CECraft's website. Reading the help file will help you understand the story and scoring of the game.

Overall, I would have to say I am very disappointed by CECraft's attempt at a pinball game. I do see potential. If they fix up the collision and ball movement, give it a more defined story line, and build on the already enjoyable graphics and sound, I think CECraft could make this game a winner. iGolf (also by CECraft) is a beautifully done golf simulation and is as good, if not better, as ZIOGolf. So how could the same publisher possibly release such a flop?

If you are a diehard pinball enthusiast, you'll probably enjoy Young Paladin for a couple days, but I'm sure you'll get tired of it just as I did.

Pros:

• Nice sound/sound effects.

• Cool bonuses.

Cons:

• No options.

• Terrible collision detection.

• Unrealistic ball movement.

• Only one board.

Overall Score: 6/10

Many thanks to CECraft for providing us with our review copy.

You may wish to search for more reviews of games from CECraft. Alternatively, you can view all the reviews written by Shaun Beane.