Three beautiful tables of pinball goodness which is, unfortunately, marred by strange pinball mechanics.

Release Date

February 2005.

Pros

The graphics are very nice. Not as good as The Pinball Arcade, but I do think it is nicer than Dream Pinball 3D.

There are twelve camera angles to choose from. There are no static cameras, but the first two move only slightly. With so many camera angles I am sure every player will find one to suit them.

Although there is no nice animated tour of the tables and how to score points, the manual is quite comprehensive as to how to play each table. The included manual from GOG.com‘s version of the game is missing the diagram of the tables, but they are available in this forum post.

Cons

The music is mostly non-reactive. I say mostly because, I have encountered one time where I triggered an event that actually changed the music. The rest of the time the music sounds like a single track being played from a CD and setting it to repeat infinitely. Even Pinball Fantasies had more reactive music than Pure Pinball 2.

Out of the three tables, only Runaway Train has music which I thought matches the table theme. The other two tables sound like just random music picked from somewhere.

The pinball mechanics feels wrong. The ball motion is okay, but it does not bounce enough off static surfaces. The flippers also feel very weak and sometimes it would propel the ball in an unexpected direction.

The family friendly nature of the pinball tables are ruined by the display of scantily clad women for the loading screens. The images have no relation whatsoever to the pinball tables. Fortunately, a nice person has provided replacement loading images and can be downloaded from this GOG forum post.

Other Points

There are three tables. That is more than Pro Pinball Timeshock, but less than all the other pinball games in recent memory.

The sounds are OK.

Pure Pinball 2 Redux works fine on my Windows 10 PC. The highest resolution I can run it at is 1280 x 960, but the game still looks and plays fine.

Biases

Reviewed the GOG.com version of the game.

I really liked The Pinball Arcade, Pro Pinball Timeshock, Dream Pinball 3D and Pinball Fantasies.

After reviewing The Pinball Arcade, I found a real pinball table and have been playing that before Pure Pinball 2 Redux.

DRM

Pure Pinball 2 Redux is DRM free from GOG.com.

Minimum Requirements (as stated in the manual)

CPU 450 MHz Pentium® II or equivalent
System RAM 128 MB
Hard Drive 800 MB of free hard drive space
Graphics Display Adapter with T&L hardware and 32 MB of Video RAM (these include NVIDIA GeForce 256/2/3/4/FX series, ATI Radeon series, SiS Xabre, and Matrox Parhelia series)
Sound DirectSound® compatible sound card
CD-ROM 2x CD-ROM (GOG.com‘s version definitely does not need this)

Computer Played On

Windows 7 64 bit.
Intel Core i5 2.3GHz
4GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GT 525M 1GB RAM
Conexant SmartAudio with egg speakers or earphones.
Graphics settings are set to whatever I feel comfortable with playing on this PC. They are usually not set to the highest settings. All screenshots are taken with my settings.