2014 has been a great year for lovers of video pinball. The Pinball Arcade had their Kickstarter for a virtual Addams Family replica funded (the most popular Pinball machine ever made, selling over 20,000 physical tables). Zen dropped a bunch of great licensed Marvel and Star Wars tables along with one based on the Walking Dead video game. How meta is that? A video game based on a physical machine, with a theme of a videogame based on a comic book?! Anywho, we’ve got two more new pinball video games to give you my spin on: Zen’s Marvel Venom and Phantom Compass’ Rollers of the Realm.
Marvel Venom
The bumper hits keep coming when Zen releases Marvel Venom December 10th or 11th (depending on your platform and its coming for pretty much all of them). I checked it out on PS4.
I’ve reviewed a lot of Zen’s tables this year and was wondering how this one would stack up. Full disclosure I’m not that up on my Spider-Man cannon. I watched whatever version of the cartoon was on Saturday mornings in the 80s and saw the Sam Raimi movies, but I’m only vaguely familiar with the Venom story and don’t recall seeing any Carnage. But usually for me the theme on a pin doesn’t necessarily matter so long as its fun to play.
That said, this theme I do think detracts from the gameplay here. I’m honestly not even certain which Spider-Man universe its based off of but the most common ball drain sound drove me crazy: “What’s a matter bro, spider sense didn’t tingle?” Since when did Spiderman involve bros? The music also didn’t work for me at all. What’s strange is it sounds like a song if I heard on the radio I’d enjoy but I was sick of it after about 2 minutes of gameplay. Between the tunes and character quotes I found I could play for longer with the mute button on.
Next up thoughts on the actual table. The layout contains a lot of my least favorite pinball elements. It has several different levels which consequently makes the center feel really tight and ramps (see what I did there?) up the difficulty trying to get into different areas. The real killer for me was my featuring my all time least favorite pin mechanic, the 2 flippers adjacent to each other. That just sets me up for too many drains of doom but at least these are in an upper playfield so you’re not losing your turn when you suck.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH8F37kUryU[width=650,height=366]
Major complaints out of the way that’s not to say this table is awful. It does have some cool modes when you start to learn your shots. The playfield isn’t all bad either. I like the circular ramp that goes around the drain area which I haven’t seen on a table before. Spidey and Venom swing around the table during gameplay is a nice touch, as well as venom bringing locked balls back into play with his giant creepy tongue. Its a nice overall city scape layout you’re rolling though complete with subway, sewers, and Statue of Liberty.
There are also Spider-Man character cameos out the wazoo if you can get into all the various modes and playfields like Doc Ock and She-Venom. And spoiler alert: if you can unlock Carnage, Spiderman and Venom team up to defeat him
Rollers of the Realm
A PAX East indie favorite, I was psyched my wait was finally over for this one and wondered if it would be as fun now that I could play for more than 20 minutes. It came out on Steam and PS4/Vita and I opted for PS4. The game seemed like a great mashup that showcased elements of both types of games prominently but how well does that actually hold together for gameplay fun?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvaf37NWsCc&list=UU7hgDFSPvJVIUx_b8i1cIL...
The RPG mechanic has each ball you have in the game represented by a character with different abilities you can level up through playing. They are the traditional classes like rogue, knight and healer and multi-ball brings some animal friends into the mix. There’s a strong story element about a medieval band of misfits told through impressive voice acting as you progress through levels.
The first level of character skills are obvious as the balls differ in size and speed as you volley them around the playfield. They also have other special abilities you can use during play and you can even switch characters on the fly. This was cool in theory, but kind of a “knightmare” to deploy in practice. I had a lot of trouble trying to rotate the left stick to switch to my healer while having both hands on the bumpers trying not to drain. The game also suffers from a lack of help menu so I had to do a lot of fumbling around trying to remember which extra button did what and I’m still not really sure how to deploy some of my special abilities.
The gameplay is comprised of different level tables that look like buildings and villages your band is wandering through. Each level is more like a small section or mini-playfield of an actual pin and some levels will have multiple sections to complete before you finish.The environmental features double as flippers and spinners so the town really is the table. Neat mechanic, buta lot of times I would keep forgetting a door was a flipper till just after I rolled past it and I’d do that again and again before it finally stuck in my brain long enough for my reflexes to catch up and make the shot.
Not only are you working the physics of the environment but tables have bad guys you’ve got to beat up by repeatedly smashing into them with your balls. I really liked that element since they move around randomly somewhat leveling the playfield between noobs just flipper mashing and players who can accurately hit any shot they want. In later levels they’ll start doing things like shooting flaming arrows at you and blowing up your flippers which definitely keeps you on your toes.
I really wish I had an old school paper manual of moves and abilities that came with that game, or in the absence of that, a virtual help menu. I think more tutorials and some skill reminders and reinforcement could help the difficulty from ramping up way too quickly for novice pinball players. Another strike in the too hard too fast column is if you get stuck in a level and keep killing your party they don’t gain any skill points or money. I know that’s a common in RPGs element but going back and fighting randomly spawning monsters to gain skill makes more sense than having to go back and play the same tables you already mastered. Pinball is a game of skill so you really need to practice the specific shots you are sucking at so playing different tables doesn’t really help you advance past the one you’re stuck on.
The story in the game is intriguing and good voice acting and clever dialog make me want to find out what happens to the characters. The game is cute and cartoony and would be good to enjoy with kids about 10 and up so long as they can get by the difficulty. Heck I should probably rent a kid to get past the level I’m stuck at!
Survey Says!
So on our 2old2play review scale what’s my final verdict on these titles? Also, can I cram in any more terrible pinball puns or obscure pop culture references into this article?!
Marvel Venom
Its not awful and if you are a Spiderman fan boy you’ll probably be happy with it. But I’m glad I got a review copy so I’m not feeling like a homicidal paperboy wondering “Where’s my two dollars.”
Rollers of the Realm
I still want to love this game as much as I thought I would. I’m not ready to abandon it just yet and hopefully if I throw a few more weekends at it and suck less I’ll get to find out where the story leads and unlock my Pinball Wizard (come on did you really think they could do a pinball RPG without a wizard?!). But right now its just too damn hard to be fun. It feels like I’m trying to play an RPG in the middle of a pinball game and I don’t have anywhere near the dexterity that’s going to require.
