By Desiree Bonilla

I remember playing pinball at the arcade here in New York. I remember being really excited to play the pinball machine because of how the lights would glow up and the sound of the flipper hitting the ball felt so real. This was a good experience because I remember being really overjoyed — even if the ball fell down the hole.

Pinball FX3 offers multiple pinball collections to play – from the worlds of Marvel, Universal and, recently, Jurassic Park. When playing Pinball FX3 you will enter a menu where you can see all the different tables. The Jurassic Park grouping has three different tables. Two of them are based on the original 1993 movie, while the other one is based on Jurassic World.

The Jurassic Park Pinball table has a lot of ramps and laneways which makes it easier to score more points. The second table is called Jurassic Park Pinball Mayhem. This table has a T-Rex and a Stegosaurus. The last table is called Jurassic World Pinball. This features the ball-throwing raptors. All include various missions which ask you to shoot the ball in certain order to proceed.

While playing this game, you must really calculate when to hit the ball and how hard to hit it. Sometimes the lanes are angled in a way which you have to quickly think on when to hit the ball with the flippers. If the ball enters a lane, sometimes a dinosaur will roar or lights will flash. The dinosaurs look similar to how they looked in the movies – fierce and angry.

Playing pinball is extremely fun when you have the pinball machine in front of you in real life, but digital pinball does not seem as entertaining. The reason is because it feels like all you’re doing is hitting a button to move the flipper to hit the ball. Even though there are puzzles to solve, I felt there isn’t really enough compelling action to it besides the dinosaur’s roar.

Although I do not necessarily enjoy playing this game, the design was pretty cool. The way the  lights flash every time the ball goes into a lane really gives you the feeling of playing pinball on the machine. There is also a part when the raptors escape the pen and surround your main flippers, so when you hit the ball they may grab it and throw it into another direction. This was cool in my opinion because it kind of caught me off guard. I didn’t really suspect that they would interfere with ball. Another thing that is pretty cool about this game is that actual movie dialogue is used when you activate challenges and shoot the ball around the ramps.

One thing that I would say needs to change is the fact that sometimes each actor’s dialogue would overlap the other’s. This doesn’t really affect the game but it does tend to get annoying. The reason it gets annoying is because all you’re really hearing is gibberish.

Even though I didn’t exactly enjoy playing Jurassic Park Pinball, if you are a serious fan of playing pinball you should try this game. And even beyond Jurassic Park, the series has a variety of themed tables to choose from.

Desiree Bonilla is a New York Videogame Critics Circle intern, part of our ongoing partnership with the Bronx’s DreamYard Prep School.