ZEN Studios and Marvel have joined forces once again to fight boredom with the release of Marvel Pinball: Vengeance And Virtue.
The four tables are taken from Marvels catalogue of heroes, most you will recognise and one will maybe leave you scratching your head wondering who it is. Below are my impressions of each table.
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Moon Knight
Who is Moon Knight some may be asking? I had no idea, my comic book knowledge comes from films and Pinball FX2!, so I done some reading up. Moon Knight (Marc Spector) has the power of Khonshu and fights crime in New York on behalf of an Egyptian God. His enemies include the Bushman, Black Spectre and Morpheus. ZEN Studios were allowed to create a brand new weapon for Moon Knight called the Moon Crossbow and you get to see and use it for the first time in a minigame.
The table features a short introduction to the character and a few cut scenes to tell the story, it was a nice touch and helped gain some knowledge of the character if you are not familiar with him. I enjoyed the level a lot, with plenty of easily accessible missions to complete on the smart looking table. I especially liked the multiball mode which has a moon shining on the balls to make them glow bright white. There is also a minigame where you get to fight opponents on a dot matrix screen.
X-Men
Fans of the comic will be happy to know that the table is inspired by episode 147 of the New X-Men series. Xavier’s team includes Jean Grey, Cyclops and Storm versus Magneto’s team including Mystique, Juggernaut and the Blob. The ultimate aim of the game is to gather the team and stop Magneto from destroying the Brooklyn bridge.
Missions include modes where you must hit certain ramps to rescue characters and fight opponents such as Juggernaut. This was probably my least favourite of the four tables, while still good, it just did not have the fun or accessibility of the other three.
Thor
The Thor table comes with all the characters and themes you would expect to find. There are four bosses to fight; Loki, Destroyer, Ymir and Surtur as you defend Asgard and the Nine Realms with your trusty hammer Mjolnir. The Rainbow Bridge acts as the mission select and battles play a huge part of the game.
The action is near non-stop and the pace is kept up by the great to listen to Rock music, it is one of the best tracks in Pinball FX2. As mentioned there are a lot of battles which are animated with the characters and fun to watch if you take your eyes off the ball. The table is designed well and allows you to get straight into the action instead of slowly building up towards a mission.
Ghost Rider
The Ghost Rider table takes inspiration from the comics of recent years with Johnny Blaze up against Lucifer, Orb, Scarecrow and Zadkiel. The tables design represents a stunt track complete with tilting jumps and plenty of ramps. The Hellfire shotgun can be activated and used to fire the pinball at areas on the table to complete or unlock modes.
This is another quality table with plenty to do, again helped by another great Rock track which keeps the action flowing. You get the chance to play a minigame with Lucifer which involves betting either 500K or 5 million points that you can hit his ball with the flippers, miss the second option and you lose your ball!
Summary
Overall the pack is great with three of the four tables being immense fun to play. That is not to say X-Men is a bad table, it falls a little short of the other very high quality tables in comparison. At 800 :MSPoints: or $10 on PSN you get four tables each with three achievements to unlock which should keep you busy for some time. Despite there being over 20 tables released for Pinball FX2, ZEN have still managed to make each table feel different to each other and the Vengeance and Virtue tables are no exception. As always, ZEN Pinball have created tables of a very good standard and should not be missed if you are a Marvel or pinball fan.
