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!

Sam was stuck on a plane during the episode recording, but the podfather joins us in his stead!  It’s well known that none of the hosts have played or plan on playing Skyrim anytime soon, so we asked Joe to join us and give us the inside scoop.  Apparently, the writing is terrible but the rest of the game is awesome.

Alex, in the meantime, has spent a ton of time dying in the Back to Karkand maps.  He’s also spent some time on the Virtue & Vengeance tables for Pinball FX 2.  Thor is apparently awesome.  Moon Knight has promise, but the ball blends too much with the black and white.

Jonathan broke out some EDF: Insect Armageddon with Sam.  Turns out beer and pretzel games work great in video as well as tabletop.  He’s also spent some time with mobile version of The Sorcerer’s Lair, a table for Pinball FX 2, and wonders why he didn’t do so sooner.

In the topics, we discuss some of the interesting news coming out of the VGAs this year.  Skyrim takes game of the year!  Bioware’s developing Command & Conquer 2!  Revengeance!  Two new zombie games coming!  Maybe those last two don’t really deserve exclamation points.

Next week, we raid our game shelves to figure out just how much time it’ll take to finish them all.

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We have something very special this week. Jonathan and Alex sit down with Neil Sorens and Mel Kirk of Zen Studios to talk some serious silver ball. Zen Studios is responsible for bringing some spectacular tables to consoles and handhelds via Pinball FX 2 and Zen Pinball. We go over topics including the initial inspiration for Pinball FX, why a sequel was necessary, the process of working with an established IP like Marvel, and the challenge of portraying beloved characters in pinball form. We also ask the all-important “Why Moon Knight?” question in a discussion about the brand new Marvel Pinball: Vengeance and Virtue four-pack of tables and take a glimpse into what’s in store with the upcoming Epic Quest table.

We also have a contest for a code for the Vengeance and Virtue tables! This is how it’s going to work:

1) Send a friend request to Alex here. If his friends list gets too full, send your gamertag to alex(at)thewayofthegame(dot)net or post your gamertag on our forums.

2) If you haven’t already, get the Paranormal table on Pinball FX 2 (sorry PS3 owners, this contest is only for Xbox 360 players)

3) Alex will periodically post up a leaderboard of the top Paranormal scores during the course of the contest so people can know where they stand. The top five scores will be posted on the forums, on the Google + page and on Twitter.

4) When the ball drops at Times Square in New York City Eastern time, Alex will check the weekly high scores of the players who are in the contest.

5) The highest score wins the code for Vengeance and Virtue!

So have fun listening to the interview and get cracking on Paranormal! There’s time to get some practice in before you have to start playing for real!

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It’s the end of the semester.  Time is incredibly tight.  The show notes are going to be truncated until Alex or I can revisit them.

We talk about GTA, EDF, MW3, BF3, MvC, ACR, and ODST.

We also discuss chopping up AAA games’ stories.  Would you rather have a 60-hour story, or 6 ten-hour stories within 60 hours of gameplay?

Next week, either another topic or an interview with Zen Pinball.

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Okay, Jonathan is obviously at his wit’s end, so I’ll pick this up.

Before we start on the main topic of the show, we talk about a post seen on Empire State Gamer about a poll that asks where the Assassin’s Creed series should go next. Ubisoft’s making no attempt at downplaying the role of the franchise, and since Ezio’s over, the series has to go SOMEWHERE. Where should it go? Should it keep the same type of gameplay? Is the same type of gameplay even possible considering the technological upgrades that come with each era? And would Assassin’s Creed in the time of the Shogun really just be Tenchu?

Our topic is episodic gaming, and it takes a little while to really get our definitions down. I came at it thinking about Sam & Max and Half Life 2, while Jonathan was approaching it from the perspective of LA Noire. So it comes down to this: should major titles with hours and hours and hours of gameplay be organized into smaller, easily digestible episodes like LA Noire, or should they keep with the do-anything-go-anywhere-epic storylines?

Finally, to plug the next episode: yes, we have an interview with Zen Studios about Pinball FX 2. And we have a tournament! Details will come soon, but in the meantime, it wouldn’t be a bad decision to pick up the Paranormal table and friend me up on Xbox Live.

That’s all for this week (unless Jonathan decides a few edits are necessary), so practice on Paranormal and keep an eye on our Google+ page and our Twitter feed for details on the contest!

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What is it that makes a great pinball table? All pinball tables have common features. Ramps, targets, spinners, bumpers and ball locks are standard. The layout of those features varies wildly from game to game, but as long as they’re placed in a somewhat intelligent matter, one pinball game will play pretty much the same as any other. It’s all a matter of hitting whatever targets you need to hit when you need to hit them in order to get a high score.

So what is it that makes a precious few tables go straight to the pleasure centers of a player’s brain, urging them to pump quarter after quarter into them, while others aren’t deemed worth the time? It’s because all modern pinball tables have a theme. It’s that little extra something that makes a table more than just a collection of obstacles arranged in a downward angle. Marvel Pinball provides four tables inspired by Marvel superheroes. I’ve fallen in love with these tables, not only as a dedicated acolyte of pinball, but as a fan of comic books.

Marvel Pinball has been released on Xbox Live Arcade as part of the free Pinball FX 2 game for 800 Microsoft points. It will soon be available as its own Zen Pinball game on the Playstation Network for $10. As I mentioned in my previous review, the four tables are based on Spider-Man, Wolverine, Blade and Iron Man. All are unique, and all are excellent; there’s not a stinker in the bunch.

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