Friday, May 16, 2003
Crystal Caliburn Pinball: I am an English Kah-nigot!
Posted by Chris Spera in "SOFTWARE" @ 09:00 AM
While some may not get the Monty Python reference, most of us “older” folks will. Ever since I played the middle head of the three headed giant in a seventh grade rendition of Monty Python’s “The Holy Grail,” I’ve been partial to anything with knights and damsels in distress. That’s one of the reasons why I was interested in CECraft’s new pinball game, Crystal Caliburn. Does it have too much peril? Will Sir Robin bravely run away? Come along and see why CC may be one of the better pinball games to hit the Pocket PC platform.
While some may not get the Monty Python reference, most of us “older” folks will. Ever since I played the middle head of the three headed giant in a seventh grade rendition of Monty Python’s “The Holy Grail,” I’ve been partial to anything with knights and damsels in distress. That’s one of the reasons why I was interested in CECraft’s new pinball game, Crystal Caliburn. Does it have too much peril? Will Sir Robin bravely run away? Come along and see why CC may be one of the better pinball games to hit the Pocket PC platform.
Spiffy Background Info
Until recently, and by recently I mean the last six months or so, I wasn’t very big into games on my Pocket PC. But then, I picked up a copy of Monopoly for Pocket PC and really liked it. Shortly after that, I ran into some pinball games from CECraft, and quickly feel in love with them. Young Paladin was ok. To be honest, it had a few minor quirks and some gravity issues with the ball, but was ok. Angel Egg was better from an action point of view, but I found the objects on the screen just a bit too small for me. Then I found Crystal Caliburn, or rather... it found me.
You see, writing for Pocket PC sites has its advantages. CECraft approached me with a review copy and registration code and asked if I would like to write a review of it for one of the sites that I write for. Seeing as I liked their last entry into the pinball simulation arena, I gratefully accepted their offer and have been having a hard time putting the game down; but I’m getting a bit ahead of myself.
Based on Little Wing’s Crystal Caliburn, CECraft's Crystal Caliburn is a decent pinball simulator. In fact, I think it’s their best entry into the genre to date. However, it does have its quirks.
King Arthur’s Court
The object behind CC is to accolade all 12 Knights of the Round Table and go in search of the Holy Grail. Like all CECraft games, the only way to successfully do this is to invoke a Multi-Battle or Surprise Attack and have multiple balls on the table at one time. It ain’t easy, kids. In fact, I’ve only be able to capture the Grail once, and as such ended up playing the game for well over three hours without a break. I ended up seeing pinballs fly around my eyes for hours after that. Now THAT was a memorable migraine!
The CC game board is fairly well laid out. Transparent ramps to the top of the board are present and accessible by either side's ball return. Field multiplier buttons are found on either side of the board below the ball ramps. Bonus multiplier buttons are found at the top of the board, and the lights move between the three fields as the flippers are pressed.
The ball ramp on the right side of the game board is the money ramp, in my opinion. Flinging the ball through this ramp, after the Accolade Knight option is lit, accolades your knights. Accoladed knights are kept track of in the Round Table at the center of the board.
Game Play
Playing the game is really simple. After installation, you are required to enter your registration code in order to play the game on the registered version. Once the code is entered, the game proceeds directly to the title screen.
Figure 1: The main Cyrstal Caliburn Screen.
Playing the game is as easy as double tapping “Start.” Once started, you’re taken to the final game board. CC gives you three balls per game. In actual play, I have found that the action is very realistic. I’ve even caught myself trying to “lean” the ball one way or another when going around ball ramps or near the top of the game board. It's only at the last moment do I realize that tilting my 5455 to the right won’t help get it get the ball around the last couple centimeters or so of a ramp. It's also at that point that my daughter usually finds me and quite calmly asks, “Daddy..? What are you doing? Why are you turning your gadget upside down?” At that point she usually gets grounded... :)
Figure 2: Knightly Pinball Action!
Rules
Taken directly from the CECraft Web site, the rules aren’t very descriptive. However, a complete PDF version is available here. Crystal Caliburn's rules are as complex as any arcade pinball machine's---but you can study them in detail, at your own pace, and at no extra cost. What an advantage! Your biggest challenge in Crystal Caliburn is to capture the legendary Holy Grail--a difficult task that will motivate you to pinball excellence!
Another distinctive Crystal Caliburn feature is its scoring system. As I mentioned earlier, when you start, playfield scores are set low. As you advance the Field Multiplier, it boosts all scores to a maximum multiplier of 15 with the Magic Spear feature. A 200,000-point score becomes 3,000,000! Advancing the Field Multiplier requires real pinball technique--there are no shortcuts.
Gotchas: First, this game is really cool. If you’re into pinball, then you owe it to yourself to give this game a shot. The action is fast paced and addictive. However, there are a couple of minor gotchas:
Figure 3: No Score Synchronization for You!
Suggested Improvements
There are a lot of potential options and fixes and touch ups to the program that would make it really tight:
Crystal Caliburn can be purchased from Handango for $14.95 US. [Affiliate]
Specifications
Crystal Caliburn will run on any Pocket PC or Pocket PC 2002 device, and will work in RAM, on a Storage Card or in a File Store. Personally, I’d recommend installing it to RAM if you have the space. Both my 3955 and e310 have 128MB of RAM, and the app runs flawlessly in RAM. If you don’t have that kind of space to spare for a game (the app takes up almost 2MB of space), it will run from a Storage Card, although you will see some performance glitches here and there that can be attributed to read/write caching on the device. The effect is magnified when running from my iPAQ’s File Store. I run it from my Storage Card on my 5455.
Conclusions
All told, I like Crystal Caliburn. The game is fun, the action thrilling at times, and the effects somewhat realistic. However, I do occasionally find it frustrating. The game almost always seems to crap out on me when my score reaches anywhere over 75 million. It takes a long time to get there and I have found it very disheartening when I have to kill a game because the ball got lost, or the game otherwise faults.
While some may not get the Monty Python reference, most of us “older” folks will. Ever since I played the middle head of the three headed giant in a seventh grade rendition of Monty Python’s “The Holy Grail,” I’ve been partial to anything with knights and damsels in distress. That’s one of the reasons why I was interested in CECraft’s new pinball game, Crystal Caliburn. Does it have too much peril? Will Sir Robin bravely run away? Come along and see why CC may be one of the better pinball games to hit the Pocket PC platform.
Spiffy Background Info
Until recently, and by recently I mean the last six months or so, I wasn’t very big into games on my Pocket PC. But then, I picked up a copy of Monopoly for Pocket PC and really liked it. Shortly after that, I ran into some pinball games from CECraft, and quickly feel in love with them. Young Paladin was ok. To be honest, it had a few minor quirks and some gravity issues with the ball, but was ok. Angel Egg was better from an action point of view, but I found the objects on the screen just a bit too small for me. Then I found Crystal Caliburn, or rather... it found me.
You see, writing for Pocket PC sites has its advantages. CECraft approached me with a review copy and registration code and asked if I would like to write a review of it for one of the sites that I write for. Seeing as I liked their last entry into the pinball simulation arena, I gratefully accepted their offer and have been having a hard time putting the game down; but I’m getting a bit ahead of myself.
Based on Little Wing’s Crystal Caliburn, CECraft's Crystal Caliburn is a decent pinball simulator. In fact, I think it’s their best entry into the genre to date. However, it does have its quirks.
King Arthur’s Court
The object behind CC is to accolade all 12 Knights of the Round Table and go in search of the Holy Grail. Like all CECraft games, the only way to successfully do this is to invoke a Multi-Battle or Surprise Attack and have multiple balls on the table at one time. It ain’t easy, kids. In fact, I’ve only be able to capture the Grail once, and as such ended up playing the game for well over three hours without a break. I ended up seeing pinballs fly around my eyes for hours after that. Now THAT was a memorable migraine!
The CC game board is fairly well laid out. Transparent ramps to the top of the board are present and accessible by either side's ball return. Field multiplier buttons are found on either side of the board below the ball ramps. Bonus multiplier buttons are found at the top of the board, and the lights move between the three fields as the flippers are pressed.
The ball ramp on the right side of the game board is the money ramp, in my opinion. Flinging the ball through this ramp, after the Accolade Knight option is lit, accolades your knights. Accoladed knights are kept track of in the Round Table at the center of the board.
Game Play
Playing the game is really simple. After installation, you are required to enter your registration code in order to play the game on the registered version. Once the code is entered, the game proceeds directly to the title screen.
Figure 1: The main Cyrstal Caliburn Screen.
Playing the game is as easy as double tapping “Start.” Once started, you’re taken to the final game board. CC gives you three balls per game. In actual play, I have found that the action is very realistic. I’ve even caught myself trying to “lean” the ball one way or another when going around ball ramps or near the top of the game board. It's only at the last moment do I realize that tilting my 5455 to the right won’t help get it get the ball around the last couple centimeters or so of a ramp. It's also at that point that my daughter usually finds me and quite calmly asks, “Daddy..? What are you doing? Why are you turning your gadget upside down?” At that point she usually gets grounded... :)
Figure 2: Knightly Pinball Action!
Rules
Taken directly from the CECraft Web site, the rules aren’t very descriptive. However, a complete PDF version is available here. Crystal Caliburn's rules are as complex as any arcade pinball machine's---but you can study them in detail, at your own pace, and at no extra cost. What an advantage! Your biggest challenge in Crystal Caliburn is to capture the legendary Holy Grail--a difficult task that will motivate you to pinball excellence!
Another distinctive Crystal Caliburn feature is its scoring system. As I mentioned earlier, when you start, playfield scores are set low. As you advance the Field Multiplier, it boosts all scores to a maximum multiplier of 15 with the Magic Spear feature. A 200,000-point score becomes 3,000,000! Advancing the Field Multiplier requires real pinball technique--there are no shortcuts.
Gotchas: First, this game is really cool. If you’re into pinball, then you owe it to yourself to give this game a shot. The action is fast paced and addictive. However, there are a couple of minor gotchas:
- Gravity: In many cases the gravity settings in the game seem to be a little confining. I am not completely convinced that the bugs are all worked out of this feature, which is common to all CECraft Pinball apps. Balls also disappear occasionally in CC, leaving you with quitting the game as the only recovery option.
- Internet Connectivity: The game comes to you apparently iScore ready. iScore is CECraft’s Internet score connectivity client. With games like Angel Egg and Dark Paladin, you can compete against other players in score rankings. Crystal Caliburn appears to be iScore compatible, but actually isn’t. While this isn’t a big loser for me, I would have appreciated CECraft enabling the feature within their code and not documenting this in the FAQ Section of their Web site as not implemented.
Figure 3: No Score Synchronization for You!
Suggested Improvements
There are a lot of potential options and fixes and touch ups to the program that would make it really tight:
- More than three balls per game: I’m tired of continually restarting the game. More than three balls per game would be great for all the CECraft Pinball simulations.
- User Adjustable Gravity : When certain options become available while playing the game, you can notice negative gravity/magnetic force pushing the ball away from the spot it would normally be instantly drawn to if the option wasn’t available.
- Savable games: I don’t always have three hours to blow on pinball. I’d like to be able to put the game down once in a while and then come back to it later.
- iScore implementation: Me vs. the World. My high score is well over 182,000,000. I’d like to know if it has been beaten and by how much.
Crystal Caliburn can be purchased from Handango for $14.95 US. [Affiliate]
Specifications
Crystal Caliburn will run on any Pocket PC or Pocket PC 2002 device, and will work in RAM, on a Storage Card or in a File Store. Personally, I’d recommend installing it to RAM if you have the space. Both my 3955 and e310 have 128MB of RAM, and the app runs flawlessly in RAM. If you don’t have that kind of space to spare for a game (the app takes up almost 2MB of space), it will run from a Storage Card, although you will see some performance glitches here and there that can be attributed to read/write caching on the device. The effect is magnified when running from my iPAQ’s File Store. I run it from my Storage Card on my 5455.
Conclusions
All told, I like Crystal Caliburn. The game is fun, the action thrilling at times, and the effects somewhat realistic. However, I do occasionally find it frustrating. The game almost always seems to crap out on me when my score reaches anywhere over 75 million. It takes a long time to get there and I have found it very disheartening when I have to kill a game because the ball got lost, or the game otherwise faults.
