It’s time to slip on your red, white and blue spandex and grab a hold of your shields because the latest and greatest addition to the Marvel Pinball Collection is finally here. As the man will tell you himself ... “I've been around a few years. Surely you must have heard of me”. That’s right, as of June 28th the Captain America table will make its debut on Xbox LIVE® Arcade and PlayStation®Network. This new table seamlessly integrate into the Pinball FX2 platform brought to you by Zen Studios on Xbox LIVE® Arcade, and Marvel Pinball platform on PlayStation®Network, with full social feature support. Fantastic Four will also feature new Achievements and Trophies, operators menu and rule sheet.

The table’s setting is based after Ed Brubaker’s Captain America 65th Anniversary Special. Players are emerged in a World War II environment and armed with the help of The Cap, his trusty sidekick Bucky and the members of the Howling Commandos; the player must lead the brigade in a full assault on Baron Zemo’s castle. All of this being said, there are a number of obstacles that stand in your way of doing this with ease including: Zemo’s Death Ray and canisters of Adhesive X that must be neutralized.

In Single Player mode, the table comes equip with several missions that require the player to “free his friends” using precision and timing while progressing to the final battle against Red Skull to acquire the “Cosmic Cube”. The Cosmic Cube is a great thing to use when you’re in a bind because it places the ball where it the player would need it most in their current mission. For example, if you’re trying to destroy all of Zemo’s Adhesive X canisters and you can’t seem to manage getting the ball into the last chute, if you manage to hit the Cosmic Cube after lowering it from its “pedestal” the ball will automatically be placed in the ideal spot to assist you in finishing the mission.

If Multiplayer is more your speed, the game includes local multiplayer options for up to four players and split-screen support for two. There’s even a feature where you can use the Xbox Live Vision camera (no support for the Kinect just yet) or Playstation Eye, to control the table by waving your hands but I found this creates even more issues and affect our precision, so I’d recommend sticking with your preferred controller setup.

Online Multiplayer allows you to video chat with your friends (up to four simultaneously) while you race against the clock to reach the highest score or to be the first to reach an agreed upon score. There are also rules that you can put in place where players will be penalized for dropping a ball. This can really change who’s in the lead because the percentage can be adjusted from as low as five percent of a player’s current score all the way up to their entire score. The player who is in the lead is dynamically updated and indicated on screen by arrows and a progress bar to give you that extra push to win.

The games art style is that of what you’d expect from developers Zen Studios, lots of vibrant colors and “true to life” character representations; you really do feel like you’ve been placed in the Marvel Universe while playing and because of this, I found that I was even more driven to complete each mission and see what would happen next. At E3 this year, I had the pleasure of having breakfast with Mel Kirk, Vice President Marketing/Public Relations for Zen Studios to discuss this further and he told me “Zen Studio’s is proud to say we have built a good relationship with Marvel and because of this we really wanted to make something that would not only look nice, but stay true to the fan base” and that it does.

The game as fully animated depictions of the following characters

• Captain America
• Red Skull in a long black coat
• Baron (Heinrich) Zemo in his black leather coat
• The Sleeper from the 65th Anniversary Special

For those of you who are already familiar with the Marvel Pinball Collection and Pinball FX2, you can expect much of the same controls and gameplay here. The games controls are customizable to a certain extent, but you’ll primarily be using either the Right or Left Trigger or Bumpers to control the flippers and the preferred face button of your choice or Right Stick to control the plunger. You also have the ability to bump the table using the Left Stick, but be careful how often you do this, as you could cause the table to “Tilt” and lock up.

There is no set difficulty settings for any of the tables in the Pinball FX2 collection, instead, how well you do in the game is based on your precision and of course how high of a score you can rack up. One of the great things is that the game shows you at the end of each time you play what your current “Superscore” is and how it stacks up to your friends, for me, this was a huge motivator because I find myself always wanting to outdo my friends and top their scores. Just like all the other tables in the collection it has an Action Camera at the top right corner of the screen. This camera is used to not only display when you’re going to beat your existing superscore, but also, when you’re close to beating your friends as well, so there’s an adrenaline rush there when you see you are only a few thousand points from being the new leader. This camera is also used to display important information regarding the missions you partake in and if you so desire, you can set it to also display “great shot camera angles”. I personally would recommend only using it as a guide during missions because it can get quite confusing when it shows areas of the table that don’t have anything to do with your mission.

All of the tables in Pinball FX 2 include Leaderboards which are based on the following:

- Single Play All-Time
- Single Play Weekly
- Ranked Match
- Superscore
- Pinball Wizard Score

Some of these Leaderboards are based on the overall tally of your scores from all the tables you own, so the more tables you own the better Multiplier you’ll receive.

Accessibility Issues/Concerns:
I credit the game for basically only using 3 buttons to control most of the actions, but with that in mind, there are a number of cases where precision comes into play where some users may have issues playing the game.
Deaf Gamers can expect a fun experience, but keep in mind that the default setting for the “Action Camera” is to display “Guide + Great Camera Shot Angles” and as I mentioned above, this can get confusing as not all of the missions are clear in terms of what needs to be done.
Although color doesn’t play a huge part in the completion of the game, Color blind gamers may find all of the flashing lights distracting on screen as a lot of them are of the red and green palette. This could make it difficult to differentiate between the areas the Action Cam is directing the player to shoot the ball.
At a Glance

Mobility: It may be difficult for some players to complete certain missions due to the demand for precision. With that said, it is possible that because the game requires only the flippers to be controlled, certain adaptions could be made to aid this. Recommended score: 7/10

Hearing: With the majority of mission objectives being displayed on either the action cam or the dot matrix, gamers with hearing impairments should find the prompts easy to follow. I will say that the prompts sometimes go away quickly though, so be sure to watch carefully. Recommended score: 8/10

Vision: As mentioned above, all of the flashing lights on-screen may cause as a distraction but the Action Cam and Dot Matrix can be adjusted in size to take up more of the screen, so this could assist in making it easier to read certain things or see prevalent actions. Recommended score: 7/10

Overall: Zen Studios has set the bar for the Pinball Gaming Market. For those of you who love your achievements and trophies, Pinball Captain America will yield 50 GS and 3 new trophies. I’d recommend that if you’re curious, you have a go at the trial and then decide if you want to spend the – 240 MSP on Xbox LIVE® Arcade for Pinball FX2 or $2.99, €2.49 for Marvel Pinball on PlayStation®Network, but in my opinion its hours of fun and highly addicting.