Marvel Pinball 3D

Game Info

Marvel Comics is taking over the universe.  Their 108 or so movie, TV, and video game adaptations from their gargantuan library of comics have entertained the world for ages.  Now, after the success of Zen Pinball 3D, Zen studios is unleashing Marvel Pinball 3D upon the world.  To which I say, “Thank you sir.  May I have another?”

Marvel Pinball takes four beloved franchises from the comics behemoth and gives them the silver ball treatment.  Included are tables from the Iron Man, Fantastic 4, Captain America, and Blade universes.  Now I haven’t actually read any of the comics, and I’ve only seen the movies for two out of the four (I know, I know…I have a huge backlog), but that didn’t hinder my enjoyment of any of the tables.  Just like their previous non-licensed tables, these would fit naturally into any arcade. However, these tables have little extras that no real table could house.  You’ll see heroes throwing shields around to disable canisters of sticky goo, you’ll see enemies flying around to mark jackpot lanes, and you’ll see the Thing literally open up a pinball with his bare hands.  All of these little extra touches take these tables up a notch.  Some of the rule sets can become very complicated though.  Once you know what’s going on, it’s not bad, but most tables have upwards of 20 pages of rules to go through if you want to understand everything.

The gameplay is pretty balanced across all four tables.  Never did I feel like I was playing the same table with a different skin while navigating through the package.  From the playfield images to the voice acting to the little figures of characters that appear in various places, you definitely know which table you’re playing.  The Blade table even has a night/day changeover that almost makes it two tables in one.  Not all the tables are created equally though, as the Iron Man table is clearly the stinker of the bunch.  Most of the ramps seemed too steep to hit on a regular basis and a lot of aimed shots at targets consistently ricochet right past your flippers or into a drain lane.  Now I realize pinball is all about angles, but when I line up a shot on my flipper and hit the target square, it shouldn’t bounce directly into a place I can’t get it.  This happened enough times for it to be a design flaw.  I still return to the table however, because of the fun missions and my determination to get a good score.  Iron Man is my white whale.  The other three tables all have plenty of missions and different objectives to sink hours of time into.  I especially liked some of the first-person shooter modes in Iron Man & Blade that brought me back to my Terminator 2 pinball days.

The physics are just as precise in Marvel Pinball as they were in Zen Pinball.  Everything bounces and rolls as it should on a real table.  Unlike a real table, but like the previous entry, there are achievements to be earned, most of them hard to get.  Like I said for Zen Pinball, it’d be nice if there were more than the four achievements to earn for each table.  You’ll also find the traditional high score leaderboards to compare skills with your friends, your country, and the world.  Zen Studios has promised Marvel specific downloadable content as well.  With Spider-Man, Wolverine, and Thor tables (among others) already released for other platforms, this package will only get better.

The visuals of the tables are on about the same level as what was seen in Zen Pinball, if not a little bit better.  All the tables are visually appealing with all the flashing lights you’d expect.  As mentioned above, each table has little animated figures of heroes and villains parked around the table.  It’s fun to watch them wake up and move around or shoot lasers at each other when you trigger certain events.  The ball has the proper reflections on it and the dot matrix scoreboard on the bottom screen faithfully recreates a real pinball machine.  Again, the 3D effect adds a great sense of depth, and I fell it takes away from the game to play with it off.  The sound doesn’t quite live up to the same billing though.  Not to send Iron Man back to the great magnetic field, but the voice acting on that table is highly annoying.  Where in the movie, Tony Stark’s massive ego comes off as charming, his pinball iteration just comes off as narcissistic prick that you wish you could smack with your flippers.  Other voice acting isn’t the best in the world, but it gets the job done well enough.  The music has an epic quality to it that matches the theme of the tables.  Again, nothing stands out.  Though I’m pretty sure I heard Zelda’s Lullaby while playing Captain America.

Zen Studios have done it again.  They’ve created another compelling, fun, & challenging set of tables inside a well produced and conceived package.  While tables do have their frustrating points (I’m looking at you, Iron Man), they keep me coming back time and time again for one more shot at the high score.  Many nights I’ve told myself  “just one more round” on each of the tables only to realize a couple hours had passed.  That’s really all you can ask out of a pinball machine, video game format or otherwise.