POSTED 18/12/10


MARVEL PINBALL

Zen Studios
PS3/PSN (also on Xbox 360/XBLA)

Amazing. A deaf, dumb and blind kid can allegedly play a mean pinball, yet somebody with all their senses in fairly functioning shape can be a total pinnie schlemiel. Curse you Zen Studios evil geniuses!

If you dig silver balls, you’ll know Zen Pinball (Pinball FX on the X-Machine). Marvel Pinball is essentially the same, but with a few under bonnet tweaks, and four tables based on Marvel characters (but no Hulk, so no smash – Amy pout!).
 
First up’s Wolverine, one of the better tables. Chockers with visual and aural references that’ll happify the finickiest fan-folks – in fact all the tables are (to save repeating ourselves, repeating ourselves later) - Sabertooth and other requisite bads bump uglies with adma... ademen... Adam Ant-imum... oh you know, that metal shit that’s really strong.

The Amazing Spider-Man is next, and probably the simplest table – but simple in Zen speak’s still pretty fucking hard. Green Goblin and Doc Ock mouth off, and the most heinous thing a pinball machine can do happens, reversing the flippers. Don’t mess with our fragile little minds like that, bastards!

Iron Man follows, and it’s shit – full of hard to nail ramps and boring gameplay. You’ve been warned.

Finally there’s our fave table, Blade. With night and day modes, and glow-in-the-dark balls, it offers the right balance of fun, challenge and fairness to keep us hissy fit-free.

For A$12.95 Marvel Pinball is superbly presented, with guides for each table, online, ace score keeping and several table views. It still suffers Zen flipper lag – despite being able to twiddle a smidge - which just shouldn’t happen. Add a calibration tool like Rock Band and quicker than you could squeal ‘excelsior!’ problem solved.

...and that’s why I have more than one suit.

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