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!

It won’t take me long to summarize Breach. It’s a modern military FPS with destructible terrain, bullet penetration, offensive cover, blindfire, suppression, a rudimentary XP system, a bunch of gadgets and a handful of maps and play modes. It’s $15 on XBLA, $20 on PC and has no single-player campaign.

The game pits CIA covert ops against OPFOR operatives who say the same tough guy lines the spooks say, only in a Russian accent. There are five classes of soldier to choose from that break no new ground in this kind of game, unless lacking a medic is groundbreaking. Riflemen are issued the standard assault rifle, gunners carry a SAW, snipers snipe, support soldiers are your shotgun-bearing close-combat guys, and recon gives players something between riflemen and snipers. The available modes are team deathmatch, infiltration (capture and hold), convoy (very similar to TF2’s payload mode), retrieval (capture the flag, only with randomized flag locations) and sole survivor (deathmatch without respawns).

For $15, you’re getting a lot of game. For the most part, the game delivers on its promise of tense, modern military action. You’ll be constantly ducking into cover or hurriedly clearing rooms of enemies as you try to complete your mission. When someone has the drop on you, the end comes very, very quick. A radar at the top corner of the screen gives you an indication of where your enemies are, but only while you or one of your comrades has sight of them. There’s also a hardcore mode that does away with the radar and halves your health.

The maps are excellent, though there are only five of them. Each has a multitude of hiding spaces and multiple firing angles to key locations. Destructible structures force players to choose between safety and a prime shooting spot. For instance, I was able to kill a few covert ops soldiers from my perch in a cliffside hut, but a well placed RPG round destroyed the building around me and sent me tumbling to the ground to my death.

Players will gain XP and more tactical choices as they level up. Low level gadgets include explosives and sniper detectors. Later gadgets will allow players to receive visual clues on enemy locations, even enabling them to see through walls. You won’t have to decide where to allocate your bonuses for leveling up; you’re given full access to all the perks, weaponry and gadgets available at your level.

My playtest of Breach on XBLA wasn’t completely without problems. More than a few times, popping into the control option of the menu switched my Y-axis reversal. Also, when I popped up my Xbox Guide during gameplay to check out my friends list while a game populated, the music crackled and skipped. Also, the cover is a little TOO sticky. When you’re in cover, you’re in cover, and you’re not going to come out of it unless you press the “cover” button again, even if you attempt to rotate your firing angle behind you.

Those are small problems, though. Breach is a game that is well worth $15 on XBLA. That being said, however, I’d say that another $15 shooter, Monday Night Combat, has even better gameplay value. I know comparing those games is like comparing apples to oranges, but I’m just letting you know where I stand if the question is simply which $15 shooter I’d choose to play. If you’re looking to get it on PC, it might be a harder sell. There are other PC shooters out there that offer similar gameplay, more maps, campaign modes and established communities for not much more than $20.

Rating: Rent It. Approach with caution.
Reviewer: Alex the Producer

Headlines this week, and a new addition to the cast!  Sam has joined our motley crew, and we are now a three-host podcast, at least until such time as we fire him.

Sam gets welcomed to the ‘cast.  Jonathan talks about Gen Con and Ex Illis, a game he didn’t have the opportunity to actually try out, but still has opinions on.  Alex goes on and on about GameStop again.  Then we get into headlines!

The News:

• Three Brothers Killed Over Xbox 360
• A bunch of game announcements and release dates that’ll take up too much space to link individually.
• Guard plays Plants vs. Zombies. Inmates play Run Away!
• Bow Wow Loses $100k to the Game in Madden Beatdown
• NCSoft sued for making games that are too addictive.
• PS3 Cracked via USB Dongle
• Australian iPhone Censorship, Developers Threaten Pullout

See ya next week for a headline that ballooned into its own topic!

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Happy half-year anniversary, folks!  We’ll just ignore the technicalities of time and space, and just use this as an excuse to celebrate!

We talk about games this week, because that’s what we’re all about!

Our early discussions are prompted by listeners.  Jonathan has been tasked with talking more about the PS3, but he’s having a hard time saying anything nice about the user experience.  Consoles are all about the games, and the games are worthwhile, but that’s about it.  Meanwhile, Alex gripes a bit about the genre change Front Mission: Evolved is going through, tying it to Shadowrun.

In other news, Jonathan picked up GameFly and doesn’t reference Alex in the process, costing him twenty bucks.  Jonathan’s also getting in on OnLive with an offer he couldn’t refuse.  Here’s hoping it’s not crap.

Games Discussed:

• Demon’s Souls
• Red Dead Redemption
• Star Wars: Empire at War
• Solium Infernum (of course)
• Borderlands

Finally, Alex is excited about the upcoming launch of Crazy Taxi, Sonic Adventure, and (possibly) Hulu on Xbox Live.

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EA has locked down the console golf game for years with its Tiger Woods powerhouse. With the official PGA license, a ton of features, near photorealistic environments and the big man himself, Tiger Woods PGA Tour comes out like clockwork every year, tempting gamers to plop down another $60 for what seems like last year’s title, only with a few extra bells and whistles. However, what about those console golf fans who just want to play the game? What options are available for those who simply don’t need dynamic weather, precision putting and official courses? Xbox 360 gamers have a choice, and it’s as close as the Indie Games section of the Xbox Marketplace: Avatar Golf.

Xbox 360 gamers are well aware of Avatars. Since they were unveiled in the Dashboard update last year, they’ve been customizing their online personas with hairstyles, clothes, and more recently props like lightsabers and remote control Warthogs. Those who have played 1 vs 100 have gotten used to seeing their avatars incorporated into game shows. Avatar Golf puts them on the golf course.

The game itself is reminiscent of Mario Golf. Swinging the club is a matter of employing the “three-click swing” method, where one press initiates a power bar, the next press determines the strength of the swing and the third determines its accuracy. Landing in the fairway allows the player to make their next shot with a reasonable degree of accuracy, assuming they can handle the three-click swing method. Landing in the rough or the sand hurts the strength of the next shot to a random degree, so players are never quite sure where they’re going to wind up on the next shot.

Putting in Avatar Golf again employs the three-click swing method, only there are two default putt settings, one for up to 25 feet and another for up to 50 feet. The power bar is just as speedy while putting as it is for when players drive off the tee, so players may be surprised at first when they overpower short putts. Once they get the hang of it, they might find the putting downright forgiving and start sinking 25-foot putts with ease. Pressing the Y button will display the contours of the green in shades of light and dark to allow players to read how their putts will break. However, don’t expect the super-realistic physics that has puts just dancing off the lip of holes like they do in Tiger Woods. If you get the ball reasonably close to the hole, it’ll go in. If it doesn’t, there’s no replay that shows you just how close you were, so just take another stroke and get it over with.

Avatar Golf won’t win awards for graphics. The holes are as graphically detailed as the avatars themselves: not much. Trees are static, no matter how strong the wind is. The holes are like three-dimensional planes suspended in air and surrounded by decorative art ranging from sunny days to cities to even outer space. Balls shot out of bounds actually fall farther than the “ground,” as if they had been shot off the edge of the world. And for some reason, the indicator that shows where your ball should land is represented by something that looks like a barber pole.

Avatar Golf approaches multiplayer in a novel way. If more than one player is playing on the same Xbox 360, they’ll play sequentially much like typical golf games. However, if they play online, every player plays at the same time. That means no waiting to make your shot while others make theirs. Everyone plays at their own pace.

Despite its rough edges, Avatar Golf has something great going for it: a price of $5, or 400 MS Points. For that price, Xbox golf fans will get gameplay that’s well worth the price, along with several golf courses and a golf course editor. Gamers will be able to let their inner golf course maker run wild and create holes as easy or as difficult as they’d like. When they’re done, they’ll be able to share their courses with their buddies online. If you don’t mind the stripped down graphics and gameplay, there’s still the essence of a great console golf game here. That, along with multiplayer online support, a robust editor and a screaming deal of a price point, make Avatar Golf a highly suggested title for all golf fans.