King Kong Pinball

Hang on a minute. Maybe it's our memories letting us down, but we don't recall a scene in King Kong where the big furry fella stops for a quick go on a pinball table. Maybe it's in the director's cut.

Or maybe, just maybe, this is Gameloft making a cheeky bid to squeeze a few more sales out of their King Kong licence. They're hardly the first. We've seen a Lord Of The Rings Pinball mobile game, for example, and even a Munsters Pinball floating about. Yeah, that's right, a pinball game based on the bargain-basement Addams Family. Not good.

But when you think about it, there's a fine tradition of real-world pinball tables based on big movies, so it's not just shameless opportunism on Gameloft's part. What matters is whether King Kong Pinball is any good or not. Thankfully, it's the former.

So, you're playing on a table that's inspired by the film, with all the key landmarks. And your job is to rack up as many points as possible, while lighting up the letters from K-I-N-G K-O-N-G to get a fat bonus. And there are all the holes and bumpers you'd expect from a decent pinball table to boost your score even higher.

It's very polished. Extra fun is added by the LED screen at the top of the table (much like old-skool tables in the real world), which hosts a couple of mini-games to play, such as clambering up the Empire State Building. They provide a welcome break from the basic pinball action, without adding any great depth.

We're big fans of one score-bonus though, where little planes appear on the table itself, and you have to destroy them by pinging the ball at them. These are nice touches, and more importantly, if you're a big King Kong fan, they're close enough to the film that they'll make you smile.

Problems? The novelty may wear off fairly quickly, more so if you played Gameloft's existing pinball game, Mystery Mansion Pinball, as the two are very similar (just with more enormous hairy simians in this one, obviously).

We expected King Kong Pinball to be rubbish – a lazy tie-in that bore little relation to the movie it's based on. But that's not true: it's a polished pinball game with plenty of the film's spirit running through it. Even without the movie licence, it's one of the best mobile pinball games we've played.