All four of these tables are of modern design, but if you are looking for variety, Pinball FX 2 is fully backwards compatible with Pinball FX 1. These tables give you plenty of bang with each ball you launch, and are loaded with skill shots requiring different approaches and techniques. I’d put each one of them up there with my favorite pinball tables, The Addam’s Family, Twilight Zone, and Tales of the Arabian Nights.Įach table offers fantastic action, fun missions, dot matrix minigames, hidden compartments, animated components, and my favorite, ramps galore. The four new tables offered (Bio Lab, Pasha, Rome, and Secrets of the Deep) are all excellent. As long as people care about their scores, any new tables they add will surely sell.Īnd even if you don’t care about scoring, or perhaps you have no friends with competitive pinball spirits, Pinball FX 2 is the best pinball video game I’ve played. Through this slightly evil system (I say "slightly" because I love it), Zen Studios has found the ultimate way to promote DLC. Convincing a friend to buy another table or two will raise their Superscores, and in turn, greatly up your Wizard Score. Depending how much you value your Wizard Score, you may find yourself playing the role of a door-to-door salesman on your Xbox Live friends list. I wanted my friends to achieve higher scores on each table just so that my Wizard Score would go up. While it may look like just another number, Wizard Score changes the social and competitive dynamics of Pinball FX 2. For instance, my Superscore (120) added to my friends’ (256) and multiplied by my tables (13), gives me a Wizard Score of 4,888. This rank compiles you and your friends’ Superscores and multiplies those figures by the number of tables you’ve played.
So, if your friend is a pinball wizard on the Secrets of the Deep table, but is terrible on every other table, their Superscore will reflect their lack of overall skill.Īs much as you want your score to dwarf your friends’, you simultaneously benefit from their high scores through another ranking tier called Wizard Score. Your pinball skill level is calculated in a Superscore, which is based on your skills across all of Pinball FX 2’s tables. The high-score competition isn’t just about achieving a high score on a table. If a friend beats your score and wants to brag, you’ll be alerted through a gloating Xbox Live message.
The score battle takes place even when you aren’t playing. If you let this window affect you, like I did, it can up the intensity. I told myself that I wouldn’t let this window distract me, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. As your score inches closer to theirs, the game updates you with the number of points required to break their score. And it’s not just their image that throws off your game. Even without having your friend near you, this image establishes the sensation that they are taunting you. Rather than displaying a high-score meter onscreen at all times, a window containing an image of a friend’s avatar wearing a crown will appear when your score approaches theirs. The way Zen Studios achieves this standing is much different from what I’ve seen in any other game. Sans watered-down beer, Zen Studios’ Pinball FX 2 brings the silver ball’s lost social legacy to Xbox Live. When arcades were thriving and bars didn’t make the mistake of replacing their pinball tables with Big Buck Hunter machines, a pinball competition with friends (and that weird drunk guy no one seemed to know) was a great way to spend a Friday night.
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