There have been a lot of really good pinball video games over the years, which usually take one of two forms: either it's a complete departure from reality, or it's as close to an actual table as the developers can get it. Zen Pinball falls mostly into the latter camp.

Download this, and you get four original pinball tables: V12, Tesla, Shaman, and El Dorado, each with a different theme. The tables mostly stick to relatively simple gimmicks, like wireframe tracks and a variety of targets, but a couple of nods to the format have been made. Your ball starts to glow white-hot as it picks up speed, for instance, and some of the special events will flash an icon onscreen. For the most part, though, you're getting a virtual pinball table, which could easily be built in real life with minimal problems.

I'm not very good at pinball. I've played a lot of it, and I like it, but five million is a good score for me. There are people on the announcement ticker on Zen Pinball's title screen that are topping a billion, and frankly, I think they're robots. Just the same, it does indicate the game has a thriving community, which helps. You can very easily find multiplayer competition, which takes the form of a simple race; the first person to reach a certain score threshold wins.

Zen Pinball's a decent use of time and money. It plays a good game of pinball, and that's all it set out to do. Any decent pinball table has almost infinite replay value, too, so you could theoretically be playing this game until your PS3 kicks over dead. It's worth looking into. Does it set the world on fire? No, but there's nothing at all wrong with it, either.