The good folks at Zen Studios are out with their newest four-pack for Zen Pinball/Pinball FX 2, Marvel Pinball: Avengers Chronicles. Here’s my take on the good, the bad, and the gamma ray-irradiated.

I don’t know if there is a term within the pinball lexicon for this type of game, but I’m going to coin one. World War Hulk is a “speller” table. It seems that every loop and target has a word associated with it, and in order to trigger an event, you have to hit the target or loop one time for each letter. The table deals with the World War Hulk crossover series in which Hulk is blasted off into space, spends some time with aliens, and comes back looking for some revenge. The story comes across as you play the table. If you start hitting the center “Arena” ramp, you’ll overhear various characters in the World War Hulk storyline talking about Hulk building an arena. Wolverine, Thing, Iron Man, and other superheroes make appearances. Overall, I’m not a big fan of speller tables, and I thought this one was a tad too yellow for my tastes, considering it’s a Hulk game. Also, Hulk is more erudite than I’ve ever heard him.

Fear Itself is another crossover table that emphasizes Thor, Captain America and Iron Man dealing with a new threat from Asgard, Serpent. I’m no comics scholar, so I’m not terribly familiar with the storyline. From what I’ve gathered from the table, Serpent apparently wants to scare people. There are some interesting things going on in the table. The ball drains on the extreme right and left of the table form a loop. Every now and then, magnets along that loop will activate, allowing the ball to travel along it just as if it were a regular loop. Magnets also come into play when you start a mode and you choose which of Serpent’s lieutenants to battle. In some modes, the ball will turn to stone and break apart if you hit the wrong targets.

The Avengers table is genius. At the very start of the game, you’ll have your choice of six balls to play, each one designed for a member of the Avengers squad. Cosmetics aside, your choice will also have an impact on gameplay. Black Widow gets score bonuses on missions, Captain America has a limited ball save, and so on. Every member of the team has their own ramp as well. Loki stands in the middle of it all. I haven’t gotten as far into the Avengers table as I’d like so far, but it’s definitely a blast to play. Also, I wound up playing this table just two days before I saw the Avengers movie (I don’t like noisy crowds, okay?), and I was surprised how the table took exact lines from the film.

The Infinity Gauntlet is by far and away my favorite table, perhaps of the entire Zen Pinball series. The first treat is for the eye. The ramps leading up to the large Infinity Gauntlet looming over the left side of the table glow with an ethereal light. Miniature suns hover over the bumpers, and each has a collection of planets in orbit around them. In the space behind the table, there’s a much larger glowing sun, as if the table were floating in space. Despite those graphical features, the table also has retro flourishes. The interior walls of the table look like they could have come from the side of an old school Asteroids cabinet, and the characters featured on the far wall look like they were drawn in the early 80s. Even the game’s sound effects and futuristic LED font hearken back to classic early arcade games like Sinistar.

The Infinity Gauntlet is a sniper table. The middle ground is open, and ramps and targets fringe the perimeter. There is a touch of Medieval Madness at work here, with players repeatedly knocking on the door of one of Thanos’ monuments to Mistress Death in order to gain another route to the Infinity Gauntlet.

The idea of the table is to collect the gems of the Infinity Gauntlet to defeat Thanos. If you hit the Gauntlet enough times, you’ll start a mode based on the theme of a particular gem: Time, Space, Reality, Mind, Soul, or Power. I don’t want to tell you exactly what happens in each of the modes, because most of them are truly joyous surprises that left me laughing and stretched my expectations of what is possible in a video pinball game.

I’ve played a lot of Zen Studio’s pinball tables. For me, Avengers and The Infinity Gauntlet are among the best tables they’ve produced. Marvel Pinball: Avengers Chronicles is on sale for $10 on PSN or 800 points on XBLA.

Rating: BUY IT!

Asura’s Wrath cuts corners. Some action adventures give you a world to explore, while others offer a dungeon-type environment with a series of kill rooms. Asura’s Wrath does neither. It doesn’t give you power-ups, level-ups or even an inventory. It delivers quick melees against massed enemies, multi-stage quicktime-heavy fights against brutal, over the top bosses and the sort of crazy mega-damage you’ve come to expect from anime such as Dragonball and Akira. However, an important part of Asura’s Wrath isn’t in the gameplay; it’s in the story. The tale in Asura’s Wrath serves an important purpose. It makes you give a damn about what you’re doing.

Normally I’m the first guy to forsake story for great gameplay. That’s not the case in Asura’s Wrath. The story and setting are simply awesome. It’s an anime-inspired sci-fi kung fu grindhouse revenge tale. When we meet Asura, he’s standing on the prow of a spaceship at the head of an armada headed towards a monster-infested Earth. In short order, he and his fellow generals proceed to take an enemy fleet out… with kung fu. Asura is already immensely powerful. He can shoot energy projectiles. He can rip apart gargantuan enemies with his bare hands. Asura is a demigod, and that’s made perfectly clear in the early stages of the game.

Asura is eventually betrayed by his allies. Much like The Bride in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, Asura spends the rest of the game getting revenge on his former allies one by one. Asura’s main character trait is rage, and that rage manifests itself in many ways. First off, Asura is perpetually, and I mean CONSTANTLY, in a white-hot fury that makes Lewis Black look like the Vienna Boys Choir. That fury appropriately has a gameplay mechanic. The GUI in Asura’s Wrath has three gauges. One starts out full, and represents Asura’s hit points. One represents the damage that Asura has dished out. The last gauge is the most important; it measures Asura’s rage.

Asura can’t heal during a battle. Most battles only end when Asura’s rage meter gets full, and that’s a function of how much damage he’s received and how much damage he’s dished out. When that meter gets full, you’re instructed to hit the right trigger to end that stage with some sort of staggering feat of strength. That restores your hit points to full, which is especially important in multi-stage boss battles. The other meter that measures the damage you’ve inflicted fills up periodically during battle and enables you to do multiple strong attacks without the otherwise mandatory cooldown.

There are also quicktime events in many battles. When you’re fighting against minions or mid-bosses, the game will periodically slow down briefly just before an enemy attack in order to give you a chance to press a button to trigger a counter. During the end boss fights, you’ll occasionally be tasked with pressing the sticks one way or another or press a button to coincide with one (or several) of Asura’s punches. The better your timing, the more points you score at the end of the level. From time to time, I completely missed a prompt, and the game proceeded as if I had actually made the press. So it’s not like Dragon’s Lair, where if you miss a certain button press at a certain time it’s game over. The only real drawback I see is missing out on the points at the end of the stage.

In much of the game, Asura fights monsters called the Gohma. The Gohma look much like recognizable animals (gorillas, turtles, elephants and the like), but they’re black, violent and covered in red veins. However, the Gohma aren’t Asura’s only enemies. Asura will also fight Buddhist-inspired forces loyal to the generals who betrayed him.

The game’s anime influence extends to how it’s organized. Asura’s tale is split into TV-style parts and episodes. Each episode is about ten to fifteen minutes long, and is capped by a “coming up next on Asura’s Wrath…” preview of what’s to come next.

Much like Kill Bill, a good part of the game is told in flashbacks. The game constantly flashes back from “present” Asura to his more-chilled-out-but-still-damned-angry pre-betrayal self. You’ll learn the root of Asura’s rage, the extent of what he’s lost, and why he’s fighting.

It’s this backstory that provides most of the meat to the game. It’s rare that an action-adventure game presents a story this compelling. When Asura battles against generals who have betrayed him, I actually feel invested into what happens. I care about kicking this particular general’s butt, and that makes the battle all the more intense.

So the big question is, should you get Asura’s Wrath? That’s a tricky one to answer. Most of the time, when I choose to buy a game, I do so because the gameplay appeals to me. The gameplay in Asura’s Wrath does the job, but I don’t feel it’s on par with some of my favorite games. There is no mode in which you can just fool around and kill things just for the pleasure of experiencing the gameplay for its own sake. Asura’s Wrath is much like Alan Wake and other strong, story-driven games in that if you want to play the game, you HAVE to play the campaign. As good and involving as it is, I can’t see it being compelling upon completion unless you’re obsessed with getting the top ratings for skill, speed and synchronicity. If you’re like me and you value multiplayer games higher than single-player ones, I’d wait until Asura’s Wrath was down to $30 or less to pull the trigger.

Hardcore 40k fans shouldn’t be asking themselves whether they should buy Space Marine. They should. Space Marine is a fresh take on the established universe, a 40k game that plays like none of the others and yet stays true to the genre’s heart and soul. For those who aren’t 40k fans (yet), Space Marine gives you an enthralling first glimpse of the epic battle for the soul of the galaxy and delivers a solid, entertaining action title.

The single player campaign puts you in the power armor of Captain Titus of the Ultramarines. He’s on a mission to recover a vital artifact from a forge world that’s come under an ork invasion. That will involve killing a great number of orks, and eventually, the forces of chaos.

If you’re a 40k fan like me, the first few minutes of Space Marine will have you shivering in anticipation. Everything’s correct here, from the terminology to the general look and feel of the tech. There’s just a touch of old school Aliens as you view the forge world shrouded by orbiting space debris.

Titus does one thing, and that’s kick ass. He is fearsome from a distance with the overpowered armory of the Imperium in his fist. In melee, he is nigh unstoppable. You control Captain Titus from a third person perspective with the exception of when you’re gazing down the sights of his firearm.

The top selling point of the fighting system of Space Marine is how Captain Titus heals. He regains health and armor with time, but time is hard to come by when he’s surrounded by 20 orks. In the thick of battle, the best way to earn health is by performing over-the-top execution moves.

The melee system is a bit like Dynasty Warriors. Pressing X will perform a basic attack. Pressing Y is a stun that can be chained to the end of a series of basic attacks. Stunned opponents can be executed, and executions are rewarded with a health boost. The bigger and badder the enemy executed, the bigger the health boost.

It sounds simple, right? Slash, slash, execute, Titus will never die? Actually, no. Titus is frequently swamped by a horde of enemies, and he still takes damage while he’s performing a desperate execution move. You have to be smart about slaughter to keep Titus alive. My tactics are usually to thin the horde with firearms and grenades until it’s time to bring the chainsword into play.

Space Marine doesn’t have a cover mechanic, but I don’t think it needs one. The levels already have a lot of cover available and there are none of the problems associated with having to press a button to “stick” to cover.

The plot in the single player campaign is excellent. Space marines are armor-encased superhuman warriors, and as such they’ll be doing superhuman things. Everything is epic in Space Marine. The first mission is surprisingly suicidal, and when Titus emerges unscathed and ready for more, you’ll know what kind of hero a space marine is.

So I’ve been enthusiastic so far about Space Marine, but there is something that’s leaving me surprisingly cold, especially for a 40k fan: the multiplayer. There are two multiplayer modes, Annihilation and Seize Ground. Annihilation is straight up team deathmatch. The first team to reach 41 kills wins the match. Seize Ground is your classic capture-and-hold game mode, where teams will earn points for keeping strategic areas under their control. So there’s nothing really new here as far as game modes go, though it bears mentioning that the maps are excellent for the most part. (Nitpick: the Waste Management is oddly claustrophobic compared to the rest of the maps, which means assault marines will have a real advantage there. The rest of the maps seem to have great balance.)

Players will have a choice of three classes to play, though they’ll have to unlock two of them by leveling up. You’ll start with a tactical marine, which has a choice of light to medium firearms and a combat knife. After a few levels, you’ll unlock the devastator class. It’s the equivalent of the Heavy class in Team Fortress 2. Devastators start off with a heavy bolter that has a decent rate of fire while on the move, but they’re also able to adopt a “brace” position that will send the rate of fire through the roof at the cost of becoming an immobile turret. Assault marines trade off firepower for mobility and melee domination. They have jet packs and dominating melee weapons like chainswords, daemon mauls and thunder hammers. When you’re attacked at short range by an assault marine, chances are you will die in very short order.

You won’t be able to customize your loadouts in Space Marine until level 4, but that doesn’t mean you’re helpless against uber tweaked players until then. Every time you spawn, you have the option of copying the loadout of the guy who just killed you. So if you’re a level 1 player who hasn’t unlocked the assault marine class, all you have to do is die against an assault marine, copy his loadout, and boom, you’re rocketing all over the landscape.

So what don’t I like about Space Marine multiplayer? Well to start, a level 1 player can copy the loadout that I earned after multiple playthroughs. If the point of leveling up is to unlock more toys to play with, why should a newbie be able to play with my toys? It’d be one thing if the player was able to unlock ONE thing at a time per death, but instead it’s a complete loadout, weapons AND perks.

My remaining complaints are really 40k fan nitpickiness. The stuff that I feel is missing is stuff that’s been in other 40k games and shouldn’t have been that big a deal to implement.

Warhammer 40k is all about customization. In the tabletop game, you can kit out your heroes to your heart’s content, all the while knowing that every additional piece of war gear comes at a price. That philosophy is carried over in Dawn of War. One of the big draws of the RTS series is the multitude of war gear with which you can equip your hero, personalizing him or her (or it) with equipment that complements the way you want to play.

The customization options in Space Marine multiplayer are scant. You can choose among a few weapons. You can choose among a few grenades. There are perks, but they aren’t game changers.

Yes, you can customize the look of your Space Marine. You can make it look like one of the classic chapters or make a whole new look all your own. I was really looking forward to this. I had my color schemes all planned out, and I’m happy with the results. There’s NO WAR GEAR. How difficult would it have been to give players certain bonuses if they look like one of the classic chapters? How about special powers if you ally a chaos space marine with one of the four chaos gods? What about something as simple as a purity seal to let you gain a little extra XP with every battle? Team Fortress 2 has shown that a shooter can have ridiculous amounts of gear with lots of abilities without breaking the game.

So while I’m very enthusiastic about the single player mode of Space Marine, I’m not nearly as gung-ho for the multiplayer. Considering how I’m usually the guy who will eschew single player for multiplayer in games, that might be considered a problem. I have not finished the single player yet, but so far I’d say it has been flawless and fun. The multiplayer seems to be a no-frills, tacked-on afterthought. It’s challenging, it’s fun, but other similar games offer deeper tactical experiences with much greater customization.

If pressed, I could describe Deus Ex: Human Revolution in four words: Cyber Metal Gear Solid. Sure, the story is much deeper and more interactive. Sure, there are multiple ways of handling obstacles. However, when the bullets start flying and you’re being called upon to use your gaming skills in split second situations, Adam Jensen might as well have a mullet and a pack of cigarettes tucked away in his jacket.

Radar showing the position of enemies? Check. Equivalent of the “?” and “!” symbols over enemy guard heads? Check. Semi-constant pestering from people speaking directly into your head? Check. Ducking from cover to cover attempting to get from point A to point B without being detected? Check.

Granted, that might be just the way I approached Deus Ex: Human Revolution. In my first encounter with armed enemies, I died, quickly. “So, it’s gonna be like that, is it?” I muttered as I endured a lengthy reload of my last saved position. I started using what I know best: MGS-style stealth. I ducked behind cover. I used the easy Gears of War style interface to duck quickly from one position to the next in order to stay hidden. When I did open fire, I did it in a situation where one guy would definitely be dead before other guards would even notice what was going on. MGS-style tactics worked, but that’s not to say a true Halo-style run-and-gunner wouldn’t have success assuming his or her aim was true.

Thankfully, or perhaps I should say wonderfully, that’s not all there is to Deus Ex: Human Revolution. The story is straight-up cyberpunk. Megacorporations are starting to take the place of nations. The topic on everyone’s mind is whether humans are ready for the integration of cyberware. As Adam Jensen, you’re the security chief of Sarif Industries, a leading cyberware company. Sure, that gives you an excuse to carry a gun in the corporate headquarters, but that also means you’re going to have the opportunity to deal with some corporate drama. The guy in the tech department is that person you might have to deal with at your real job whose only purpose in life seems to be to belittle you. By accessing your coworkers’ computers, you can read their emails and get to the bottom of all the drama that’s going on that doesn’t deal directly with you.

In my brief time with the game, I was put in several situations where morals directed the path of conversations. Without spoiling too much, what would you have Jensen do if a coworker wanted him to cover up some corporate wrongdoing? What if a superior asked Jensen to do something that wasn’t exactly legal? During my playthrough, I knew it’d be easy to play the morally ambiguous type, so I went out of my way to play the paladin. I was surprised how the game managed to bend to my play style.

In my last two hours with the game, I made several moral decisions and didn’t fire a single shot, though I definitely could have if I just wanted to jet from one place to another with the intention of murder. The story is a mature and engaging mix of corporate drama, human ethics and mystery. The plots would fit with little difficulty into Blade Runner or Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.

Moral decisions aren’t the only choices you’ll have to make in the game. You’ll also have the opportunity to dictate how your cyberware progresses. Of all the decisions I made in the game, the cyberware upgrades were the most intriguing and took the most hand wringing. As you progress in the game, you will get Praxis Points. You’ll either find them lying around in the level or get them naturally through experience. You’ll use them to buy cyberware upgrades. Every upgrade you can get is awesome, but the rarity of Praxis Points means you’ll be agonizing over which upgrade you should get first. Do you want to get the stealth cloak even though your limited power supply will mean you’ll only get a few seconds of invisibility? Do you go for the radar upgrade that will let you see guards’ cones of sight? Do you go for the ability to leap nine feet in the air or the one that will let you fall from any height without damage? Do you want to see through walls or punch through walls?

If I could complain about anything in my limited play time, it’d be the takedowns. Takedowns are your melee attacks that incapacitate or kill your enemies. Maybe it’s just an Xbox thing, but when I triggered a takedown, the screen went black for less than a second as if the machine was loading up the takedown animation. Then the animation occurred, the foe was vigorously kung fu-ed, and the camera went back into Adam’s skull for the first-person perspective. It seemed quite clumsy to me, since Ezio and Batman have been doing takedowns for a long time without having a black “wait, I’m loading!” flash.

And yes, another small gripe I have is the fact everything is yellow. This strikes me as a very weird artistic decision. Also, the font in this game is SMALL and I can’t see a way to change it. While the subtitles were generally readable because they were a bright white color, the text is a dull gray against black when you’re reading emails. I had to physically get closer to the TV in order to read them.

I feel like no one told me Deus Ex: Human Revolution is what it is. It’s a solid, mature cyberpunk story that’s flexible enough to let you do whatever you want to do however you want to do it. It has my solid recommendation.

Gratuitous Accessories: PS3 Soap (Mountain Dew Scented, No Less)

Page 2: Sony’s “Welcome Back” Package Available:

Technically, Sony launched their “Welcome Back” package last week, but when I tried to connect to the PS Store, apparently everyone else on the planet was doing the same thing.  I did connect to the store once, and then got an error when I clicked on anything else.

Hopefully by today, things will have calmed down, and you’ll be able to get hold of your games.  Don’t forget the PSP gets a package, too. 

The offer expires June 14th, so hop to it, folks.  Which games are you choosing?

Brink is built for multiplayer.

I’ve been pondering how to begin this review, and that first line keeps coming up in my head. Brink seems to have been built with multiplayer, and only mutliplayer, in mind. That’s not to say the lone wolf won’t find something to like in it. In fact, there’s probably a lot for them to enjoy. However, the lone wolf won’t find the deep, involving single-player campaign that will have them avenging their lost family, bringing time-space bombs onto motherships or nurturing potential love interests. What they’ll get is an involving, addictive game that’ll keep their itchy trigger fingers satisfied and, perhaps, appeal to their desire to play their way. For those who aren’t lone wolves, well, be prepared for one hell of a game.

In Brink, you’ll be playing either the Security or Resistance factions vying for control of the Ark, a vast futuristic floating city bobbing somewhere out in the trackless ocean. Security represents the power structure of the Ark, while Resistance is a straight up terrorist group. When you opt for a campaign mission, you’ll be asked to choose a side and get that faction’s take on the following battle.

Into this scene, you will insert your character. It’s not uncommon for modern shooters to incorporate RPG elements. In Brink, you’ll be earning XP, leveling up and buying various perks. However, it’s your character that levels up, not you as a player. It’s a significant difference. You choose the character to play in the mission much like you’d choose the character to play in an MMORPG. Your characters start at level zero, and the more you play, the more they’ll level up and the more you’ll be able to customize their appearance and abilities to your liking. You want a shirtless guy covered with tattooes with a neon green mohawk who can shoot grenades in midair and reload while sprinting? You can do that in Brink.

If you’ve played Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory or Team Fortress 2, you’ll be right at home with the gameplay in Brink. Splash Damage, which developed Enemy Territory, also developed Brink. As I said before, when you start up Brink, you’ll be taking your character into battle. Once he’s in there, however, you’ll have a choice of four classes to play. Unlike TF2, your character’s class has nothing to do with his appearance.

Soldiers can plant explosive charges on key areas of the map and give teammates extra ammo. Medics can revive incapacitated teammates in the field and provide health boosts. Engineers can repair machinery, disarm mines and provide damage boosts to teammates. Operatives can disguise as dead opponents and use hack boxes.

As you level up, you’ll be able to buy more abilities. For instance, engineers with the appropriate perk will be able to drop turrets. Operatives can buy a perk that will extract information out of downed enemies in order to have all enemies light up on your teammates’ radar. If you don’t like the way you bought your perks, no problem. There’s a “sell all” option that will allow you to start from scratch.

You can change class on the fly, but only at special areas of the map called command posts. There are command posts near where your side spawns that are heavily defended, but there are a few neutral posts in every battlefield that you’ll be able to use if your side controls them. The command posts in the field also provide boosts to your teammates, so while they’re not absolutely critical to your success (I haven’t seen a game yet that requires you to have a certain number of posts in control to win the game), they certainly help.

Many games have sprawling maps that have multiple objectives. For instance, there may be an ultimate goal, and there are several other things you can do, like holding a bridge or repairing a machine gun nest, that can contribute to that goal. In Brink, the game knows what needs to be done and rewards players who accomplish these goals. There will always be a main goal, like defending a key location. Just being near this location will give you extra XP every few seconds. However, if you’re a fair bit away from the main objective, you can press up on the D-pad, and it will bring up a radial menu that will show you what objectives there are available and how many teammates are on each goal.

So if you bring up the objective menu and find that there are already four people on one task, you might highlight a different objective to accomplish. For instance, say you kill an enemy while defending a main objective while playing an operative. If you’re quick, you can bring up the objective menu, highlight the “disguise yourself as the enemy” task, and then do it right there. While you’re disguised as the enemy, you may take that as a good opportunity to highlight the “capture enemy command posts” mission and sneak behind enemy lines to do it. If you’re a medic, you’ll be able to take missions to revive teammates. As a soldier, you may take a mission to give ammo to a friend. You’ll get XP for everything you do in Brink, but you’ll get more XP if you use the objective menu and “declare” you’re doing it.

Campaign mode in Brink is also mutliplayer mode. Unless you specify otherwise, by starting a campaign mission, you’re also opening it up for people to jump in. The whole process is seamless. If you lack the required number of people playing, bots will jump in. The bots are often so good, you won’t be able to tell them from real people except for perhaps a tendency to get hung up on the architecture of the level.

Speaking of architecture, be prepared for some first-rate maps. There aren’t a lot of them, but they are deep and varied. Cover is always available, and the game’s vaunted parkour system is so good, it makes you wonder why other games haven’t done it before. If you haven’t been keeping up with Brink, your ability to parkour is dependent on the body type of your character. Slim body types have the least hit points, but they’re able to vault, jump and slide across the battlefield like it’s their personal playground. Medium body types can vault high obstacles, while heavy body types with the most HP are slow and have to take the long way around.

I’ve been plenty enthusiastic about Brink, but it does have some glaring issues. First, while it deserves kudos for minimizing the amount of time you’re NOT playing the game (I’m looking at you, Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood), it does so at the cost of having any sort of lobby system at all. If you have a party, one party member has to join a game and then invite the rest of the party in. I never had an issue where this forced the party to split into separate groups during my playtest, but I’d have to think that would be a possibility. There are major texture pop-in issues that make Brink look like a game that may have been rushed out the door. Lag also proved to be a major issue in a few of the games I joined. Lastly, while it’s fun to build a tweaked character to fill a certain role, class-specific perks will be useless if you choose to switch classes during the game.

If you can overlook these issues, there’s always something to do in Brink. You can build a cadre of tweaked characters and pick a different one each mission. You can play the same one over and over again if you like. You can stick doggedly to the main missions, or you can freelance and take on side missions. You can go around the wall or over the wall, camp out or parkour, fortify or probe defenses. No matter how you play, there’s going to be something for you in Brink.

Rating: Classic – These are the games that you’ll want to play again and again. Buy it and hang on to it.

Reviewer: Alex the Producer on Xbox 360

Special thanks to Cubninja of Co-Optimus.com for being a great teammate during pre-release.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Podcast: Play in new window | Download