Necronomicon (Impressions)
A few weeks ago, I finally managed to get my hands on a new copy of Necronomicon. This is another digital pinball game from Kaze, the masters of the genre, that appeared on Sega Saturn way back when.
Some of you may recall Kaze's earlier Saturn effort, Last Gladiators, which was pretty damn fun in its own right. Well, quite simply, Necronomicon kicks the crap of Last Gladiators and may well be the very finest example of digital pinball.
As the title suggests, the theme is 100% "Lovecraftian" (yep, Cthulu mythos, a la H. P. Lovecraft). Curiously, I was expecting "Giger-esqu" art, but alas, it's quite a bit more traditional (actually, fairly similar to the style found in Last Gladiators). In fact, the graphics generally reflect nothing more than what a real pinball table would look like, albeit with a few macabre touches.
You get 3 different tables to play on, and all of them are decent to great. The table layouts vary quite a bit, with different challenges, ramp layouts, flippers, etc.
There's some into music from Dream Theater, and the music generally swings between haunted house music and "impending doom" metal. It fits. Also, as with Last Gladiators, there's a ton of fairly cheesey voice overs that correspond to the on-screen action.
So what makes it great? Gameplay, baby! PERFECT pinball physics, solid pinball challenges, and absolutely insane multiball madness!! You get a perfect view of the entire table (no scrolling, thank you), and thanks to some surprisingly crisp graphics and color, you can ALWAYS tell exactly what you need to do in order to unlock the current challenge or otherwise score mad points. The action moves at a brisk pace (much quicker than in Last Gladiators), and when you finally get some muliball going, chaos reigns!! You WILL be on the edge of your seat as 7 or 8 steels balls are rocketing around the table, flippers going non-stop, and the voice-over repeatedly screaming "JACKPOT!" Great stuff.
It's not as slick looking as Akira Psychoball (another solid Kaze effort), but its pure pinball action is unmatched IMO. An exciting yet oddly relaxing game that's worth the effort to track down if you're at all into digital pinball.
