When it comes to comic book characters, my knowledge only stretches to about where popular culture appropriates them. So when I played these few tables on Pinball FX 2, I only recognized Black Widow. Marvel released a set of over twenty new tables for the popular pinball game on Xbox One, including characters and series like Civil War and Avengers.
I’m not very knowledgeable when it comes to Marvel, but each new Pinball table comes with a small expositional story tied to it whenever you start a game, and I was quite surprised at the level of innuendos used in the games. For instance, on the one table where the ‘superhero’ is relegated to a woman who was robbed of her savings; she kept ordering you to shoot the ball in ‘this hole’. Now I wouldn’t describe myself as a social justice warrior, but I can see some people taking issue with how the tables depict women, especially if they’re stereotypically helpless even when they’re ‘superheroes’. The way the ladies act in the game really makes the name ‘Women of Power’ ironic.
However, the Pinball games were as you’d expect. Not much in the way of groundbreaking gameplay can be expected. Your controls remain the same across all the tables and you’re expected to tally up a high score. I quite enjoyed the game for what it offered, however, it’s not something I would play for hours on end.
Marvel’s Women of Power is part of several add-ons to the Pinball FX 2 series and can be purchased in a bundle or each table individually. Pinball FX 2 is currently available on Xbox One for free but you need to buy the tables.
Dreyer was a regular ICXM contributor between 2016–2017, publishing 139 articles across opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news. Their work focused on hands-on reviews, platform commentary, and breaking-news reporting during the Xbox One X launch year and Microsoft’s wider Play Anywhere / UWP gaming initiative. They post on X as @dreyer_smit.