The Force is Strong with Pinball - ExtremeGamer's Blog

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ExtremeGamer's Blog

The Force is Strong with Pinball

Posted on February 26, 2013 at 02:00 PM.

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Zen Studios has been supporting their pinball titles for the PS3 and XBox 360 for a few years now with Zen Pinball 2 and Pinball FX 2. The slew of original tables and licensed tables have been coming out at a pretty regular pace, lately it's been a bunch of Marvel Studios tables that have been eating up all my time, but now thanks to a deal with Lucasarts, we have Star Wars Pinball hitting the game. There will be a total of 10 Star Wars themed pinball tables releasing for the varied platforms over the next few months. The first pack releases today for PS3 and tomorrow for Xbox 360 for $10/800 MS Points.

The tables included are Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, Boba Fett, and The Clone Wars. I am pretty sure this comes out of my mouth on every Zen Studios DLC release, but right now, these are my favorite tables out of the 41 I have for Pinball FX2.

The Empire Strikes Back table is a well laid out table where Darth Vader is present and uses a unique feature of light sabers moving/placing the ball on different parts of the table. The backdrop of the table will change depending on what scene of the movie you are in and what different tasks you must complete. This one follows a distinct plot with the actual movie and has a lot of character voices like Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader and Yoda. If you know the movie (as I'm sure any Star Wars fan can attest, it's the best movie of the six), then you know how this table plays out, using a lot of scenes/dialogue from Hoth.

The Boba Fett table is an interesting one. Found it to be the most difficult one to get points one, and the one I seemed to lose my ball on the most. But at the same time, the one my son loved the most. There is something really cool about being Boba Fett and accepting jobs from both Darth Vader and Jaba the Hutt. This table is easily the most satisfying of the release when you do get a big score going. Also the one you keep coming back to for the cool dialogue and events that unfold. Plus, it has a Sarlacc pit, how cool is that?

The Clone Wars table is all about points. This one takes places between the events of Episode II and Episode III, using the cartoonish look from The Cartoon Network series. This one is a more classic type pinball table with ramps all over the place. Easy to rack up 10 million points in just a few minutes of playing, the difficulty comes in keeping the score coming. I know the least about this story going on during the table play, but came away having the most fun with it. More so because I am scoring 40-50 million points each run compared to the 10-20 million per run on the other 2 tables.

Zen Studios set the bar high years ago with the quality of their tables and releases, so I had no fears at how good Star Wars Pinball would be, but even then, they still exceeded my expectations. There are 7 more tables to go for this whole release, I can't wait to see what is next.

Score - 9.75/10

*Note: Copy was provided by the publisher for review. Primary play was the Xbox 360 version of the game.

Comments

# 1 Lieutenant Dan @ Feb 28

Great write up, Extreme. I also am a huge fan of Pinball FX2, and own all the tables as well. These are excellent entries and carry the Star Wars brand very well.

I agree the CW table keeps me coming back the most. It seems to have a higher ceiling for triggering story events and animations than the other two tables, so you gotta work for it more. Very challenging!

# 2 ExtremeGamer @ Feb 28

Send me an XBox Live friends request, can always use more friends to compare scores with! I think right now I have a good 10 people on it.

# 3 Lieutenant Dan @ Mar 2

Thanks! Just added you.