Star Wars Pinball: Heroes Within Review - ExtremeGamer's Blog

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Star Wars Pinball: Heroes Within Review

Posted on May 1, 2014 at 09:07 PM.

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Han Shot First

Zen Studios has become the new master of pinball games, creating a fantasy world in their pinball games but retaining the true to the feel of pinball machine in your home. It�s a difficult task to have the property feel authentic all the while also feel like a pinball machine. This has impressed me over and over again with each subsequent Zen Pinball release.

When Zen announced that they were tackling the Star Wars franchise with 10 tables last year, I was excited at the possibilities of what could be done.We had already seen multiple Marvel tables that were each excellent in their own right. The first six Star Wars tables were released over the last year or so leading up to the final release, Heroes Within, so they had a lot to live up to.

This release has 4 tables over the normal 3 we have been accustomed to. Right away, there�s more detail in Heroes Within than maybe any Zen release to date. I�ll go in order on each table to give an overview of what we they have done with these.

Han Solo

Han Solo was one of the headline tables of this pack, as it�s about one of the most iconic Star Wars character of all time. The Cantina music plays the entire time you�re on the board as well as having many of Han Solo�s famous lines being played (they can become quite repetitious). The Millennium Falcon is in play as well as a shooting gallery of Star Wars foes at the top half of the table. I found Han Solo to be one of the more difficult tables of the bunch but one of the more satisfying ones.

A New Hope

Probably my least favorite table of the bunch is the New Hope table. I really don�t know why, it has all the iconic Star Wars sounds and voice overs and deals with the first movie. It�s still a fun table to play with the Tusken Raider mini game as well as the trench run (which I never got to admittedly but cool it�s there none the less). I have found the tables based on the movies directly haven�t been as fun as the more creative ones out of the 10 tables to date. One real big positive, the table has a Death Star on it that can be hit. Bonus!

Masters of the Force

The colors and look of this table pop off the screen, maybe Zen�s best looking table to date. First table I recall that uses full motion video as well, as a little video will play right above the flippers for some of the battles (Episode 1�s Darth Maul battle for example) with the battle playing out with figures moving across the playfield while you try to hit them will your ball. The light and dark force mechanism works great here. There�s a holocron here you collect for each respective side of the force. Creating mini games dealing with the Emperor and Yoda. Masters of the Force was easily my kids favorite table and it�s up there for me out of the entire Star Wars suite, just a fun table that completely has the �one more ball� hook to it.

Droids

Droids is the best table of this set, bar none. It plays out on a Jawa Sandcrawler with R2D2 and C-3PO trying to continue their mission of relaying Princess Leia�s message, Death Star plans and just overall escaping the Jawa�s clutches. This is the fastest table of the bunch, so if you like long loops and fast moving pinballs, this is definitely the one you will gravitate towards. The mini games are great, consisting of things like trying to repair a broken C-3PO by collecting his parts to reassemble him. It�s a high scoring table that is just flat out fun.

Overall, this is a great send off for the Star Wars tables in the Zen Pinball universe. I don�t know if we�ll see tables based off the prequel movies at any point in the future, but these are not to be missed. All 3 suites, Star Wars Pinball, Balance of the Force and now Heroes Within are some of the best video game pinball you can play period. They are available digitally on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, PS Vita, Xbox 360, Steam, Mac, iOS, Google Play, and Amazon.

Review copy was provided by the publisher. Primary play was on the PS4.