Review: The Walking Dead Pinball (XBLA)

Anybody that reads The Walking Dead comics or watches the TV show knows that when it comes to defeating zombies – or walkers in the world of The Walking Dead – in the undead apocalypse, anything can be useful as a walker-head-crushing weapon. Frying pans, pool cues, 2x4s, baseball bats … practically anything within reach while under walker attack duress. What wouldn't be particularly useful to slaughter walkers is a single small silver pinball from a pinball machine. Not seeing that as much of a brain-buster. That is unless while playing The Walking Dead Pinball table on Xbox Live Arcade via Pinball FX2 from Zen Studios.

Review: Kickbeat (PS Vita)

Music rhythm games are one of those vices amongst some gamers – find an addictive enough game and you'll end up losing track of whole hours, if not days, at a time.

Most games in the genre use flying colors to keep you visually stimulated while you bang out the buttons on your controller or plastic instruments. Kickbeat has you wailing on hordes of enemies to the tune playing in the background. Mistakes normally would have an audio queue – either a screech in the music playback or a gap; instead mistakes are more tangible – your character gets hurt and takes damage. Too much damage and the game is over.

Review: CastleStorm (XBLA)

Ninjas versus pirates. Birds versus pigs. With CastleStorm on XBLA, add knights versus vikings to the list of enemies that don't like each other very much in tower defense-type games. But this isn't a typical tower defender. CastleStorm relies on a lot more strategic elements, including deploying troops and creatures on enemies and unleashing heroes with classic old-school hack & slash brawling to bring victory and vanquish the opposing castle dwellers.

CastleStorm is more than just an Angry Birds copycat. There is more than one way to win besides knocking down walls, although the best strategy is to pound the enemy's castle and secure a win through destroying theirs first.

Review: Star Wars Pinball (360)

After giving the iconic and classic comics universe a proper pinball treatment with its excellent collection of Marvel pinball tables, Pinball FX 2 applies the same reverence to another iconic classic, the Star Wars universe, with Star Wars Pinball on Xbox Live.

For a movie franchise that loves its trilogies, Star Wars Pinball has three tables included: Clone Wars, one devoted to the badass bounty hunter Boba Fett, and the best of the three, Star Wars Episode IV: The Empire Strikes Back. All three have the expected level of quality that all FX 2 tables have come to be known for in respect to the ball physics and pinball sounds. FX 2 pinball gives gamers such an unbelievably realistic pinball experience, it's hard sometimes to realize you're not actually standing at a table in the arcade or local pizza shop with a few quarters or tokens lined up on the table glass waiting for the next game.