28 June, 2015

Red & Ted's road show

The new Farsight table is out and it is another Pat Lawlor one. The common lore is that Lawlor arrived at the concept for Road Show while sitting stuck in rush-hour traffic outside of Chicago due to road construction. Be that as it may, the table Red & Ted's Road Show 




is closer, theme-wise, to Funhouse. In fact instead of the single, Rudy, talking head of Funhouse, here we have two talking characters: Ted the bulldozer driver and Red, his female boss. The dual plunger of Funhouse is also present.

I haven't played the game a lot and in fact finding an acceptable hue for the ball has been far from trivial but I did like it from the outset. (But then, as you probably know, I am a sucker for Lawlor pinballs). The main reason I did not progress as much as I would have liked with the game is a) the set of rules is rather complicated and b) I'm still 100 % into Addams Family. But you, you should not hesitate: this Farsight game is a must.

12 June, 2015

Zen Pinball – eSports Edition


Zen Studios just released a new pinball: eSports Edition. In this game you are supposed to compete with other pinball players. The whole match setup is complicated to the point of making one wonder why did Zen Studios invent all this. Well, I guess that they must have their reasons. 

Since the game is freeware I decided to give it a try. There are two tables in this pinball: Mars


and Epic Quest


I find the first totally uninteresting while the second would have been better were it not for a problem with ball visibility: in fact the tabletop is so high in colours that it becomes really hard to follow the ball. As always with Zen pinballs the graphics are superb and the physics OK. I was not hooked by the eSports pinball but you may give it a try.

03 June, 2015

Portal, the new table by Zen

Last week Zen Studios released a new table, with an original theme. Instead of being inspired by a movie or a TV show this time the pinball is inspired by another game, which moreover is not produced by Zen: Portal.


Unless you were living under a stone, you have certainly heard about Portal or even, like myself, played a little with this classic. I must admit that I had some expectations for the Portal pinball. After all, I did like the Walking Dead and South Park, to say nothing of Plants vs. Zombies (another game inspired pinball). Unfortunately it was a letdown. Portal is the perfect Zen pinball: great graphics, superb (but useless) animations, good physics and uninteresting gameplay. After playing the game for a few minutes on a friend's iPad I decided that it was not for me and I went back to Addams Family.