Unless you’re just plain stupid you know that FX Pinball 2 is one of the best Arcade games around, offering fantastic gameplay and a price-package to suit practically everyone since the actual core game is free, you need only pay for the tables.

Well, Zen have returned to bring us another addition to the game, and after the utterly amazing Marvel pack it had a lot to live up to. Thankfully it does.

So what we have is a table set on the red planet itself, mars. The basis of this table and its mini-games are setting up a colony so humans can move in and make themselves feel at home. One mission you can activate see’s you fueling up and launching a spaceshuttle which blasts down the middle of the screen, while another mission will end up turning off the gravity while you desperately try to fix it, but the gravity will occasionally return for a few seconds sending you into a panic as you try to save the ball.

While other tables can feel a little clustered  and manic with bright neon lights, Mars has gone with a more subdued feeling in its light blue hues. The result is actually more striking than many of the other tables and creates a nice atmosphere for sitting down and racking up those high-scores.  The background has been given attention as well; instead of a boring plain color they’ve gone with a clear class looking out into space where asteroids are lazily floating around. Ace.

There’s a fairly large open area at the bottom end of the table which helps give the whole thing a less clustered feel than other tables in the series, but it does mean this is a very top end table with most of the action going on in the upper limits of the table.

The Mars table only has one definite flaw, and one potential flaw. The potential flaw is a simple one; Mars doesn’t really change anything. The basic table layout is the same, and while there are a few new cool missions it never really produces anything new, but then how much can you really change on a Pinball table?

The definite flaw is the 240MSP asking price which is a good bit more expensive than other tables.

If you’re a major fan of FX Pinball 2 then I see no reason why you shouldn’t add this beautiful table to your collection as soon as it is out on April 20th, but if you’re more of a casual fan then checking out the demo of the table first is highly recommended as that’s a fair chunk of points to spend on a single table.