Brothers in Arms: Win the War (Pinball FX Table Review)

Brothers in Arms: Win the War
Pinball FX Debuting Pin
First Released February 16, 2023
Main Platform: Pinball FX
Switch Platform: Pinball FX
Designed by Thomas Crofts
Set: Gearbox Pinball ($14.99)

The first time I heard about this table, I remember thinking “Brothers in Arms? Why the hell would they go to gaming’s graveyard and dig this license up?” Now that I’ve played it, I.. feel exactly the same way. Brothers in Arms? REALLY? Why even bother with the license? Just make a generic war-themed table that you don’t have to pay the royalty for! I get that Gearbox doesn’t have a ton of options to choose from in order to pad the set’s table count, but is anyone really nostalgic for the further two-fisted adventures of Matt Baker, only this time, it’s pinball?! What they should have done is two completely different Borderlands pins. The one we reviewed already, and one that’s actually fun.

Do you know what Brothers in Arms’ problem is? Well, besides the fact that everyone at Zen Studios should be charged with desecration of a corpse for taking THIS license? Brothers in Arms is a pinball version of a gritty war first person shooter. So, why’s there no grit to it? Look at the best war pinball game ever: Battle of Mimban. It looks ramshackle, like a rickety barracks thrown together in fifteen minutes that’s expected to collapse from the elements not long after they pack their bags and leave. It’s just a facade: that table has elegant target placement and a nice zip to the ramps, but it feels gritty. Then you have Brothers in Arms, and it looks like.. well, any other generic pinball table. Could be any theme, really! War is ugly, and cold, and raw. Brothers in Arms doesn’t capture that at all. It looks like a propaganda poster, and that’s certainly one way of going about it. But even when the table adds things like explosion effects or rainfall or fires, it just looks too clean cut. Everyone says I don’t focus enough on theme integration. Here, the failures of using the theme stand out. I’m just too spoiled by Mimban.

Signature Shot(s) – Mode Start: The old school layout of Brothers in Arms is punctuated with a cluster of drop targets protecting the mode start hole. These targets also become stationary for some of the modes. Sometimes the target cluster concept works. I don’t think this quite pulls it off. Like every other element on Brothers in Arms, it’s efficient. It gets the job done. And there’s nothing exciting about it.

Otherwise, Brothers in Arms is a genuinely solid table with a nice layout and variety of solid but unremarkable shots. The biggest problem is there’s no truly memorable elements to Brothers in Arms. The modes in Win the War are “mid” as the kids say. The ones that use multiball all feel samey, but at least they don’t have a timer. By far the best mode is infiltration, where you have to hit an orbit to sneak into a base, and if you miss, it alerts the Germans, AND THEN the timer starts, but you can turn off by hitting the mode start. I liked that one a lot more than the spam-multiball stuff. I suppose those technically fit the theme, but it happens too much and becomes mundane. Besides, this is NOT a table situated for multiball. The outlanes are too bloodthirsty, and the slingshots are their Renfield (I was saving that line for Bram Stoker’s Dracula but I’m not holding my breath for that one coming anytime soon). The kickbacks are often completely worthless. I lost count of how many times the left outlane threw the ball directly at the right outlane. When you devalue kickbacks, Zen designers, you’re only turning table features into busy work for no reason. The table has nothing to gain from this. That’s not a challenge. That’s not difficulty. It’s just a coin flip, over and done so fast that it’s not exciting for the player. It just ruins the fun of the table. YOUR table. Knock it off.

Signature Mode – Air Raid: Air Raid mode is terrible. How about adding time to the clock when you make a shot? Some of those shots you have to make take the ball to the bumpers, where they bounce around as the clock is ticking. And the mode isn’t even over when you DO make the three shots. You have to do it again because of the tried and true mentality of “why be three shots when it can be six? Why six when it can be eighteen?” Yes, EIGHTEEN shots in a single mode: six with a single ball, twelve multiball, all while the table shakes in regular intervals. By the way, the answer to those questions is and always has been “because it becomes boring.”

I initially had Brothers in Arms rated GREAT, but I think that was just excitement for a new table that wasn’t a trash fire. Now, eh, I think it’s just barely okay. This is a table with shot selection that feels like it would be a shoe-in for a Certificate of Excellence, and instead it’s struggling to keep its head above the water. Dad REALLY likes it. He loves the bat flippers and the loot drops, though even he concedes that Zen’s kickbacks throwing the balls down the drain is so tiring at this point. The best thing I can say about Brothers in Arms is, despite the flaws, you don’t need to be a fan of the franchise to enjoy the pinball table. That’s normally an underrated achievement, but it means nothing here because this is a generic World War II-themed pin based on a generic World War II-themed game franchise. Actually, I was wrong when I said A Samurai’s Vengeance was Zen’s version of a Zaccaria pin. No, THIS is that table, right down to snatching the license to the washed-up gaming franchise. And by the way, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s pinball! If you can’t cement your tongue firmly in your cheek with this, I don’t want a part of it. The problem is, you can’t try to make THIS style of shooter’s pinball table when your only goal as a designer is apparently making it hard to control the ball above all else. It just becomes a lot less fun than it should be. If Goat Simulator is any indication, Mr. Crofts finally figured that out, but a little too late for Brothers in Arms.
Cathy: GOOD (3 out of 5)
Angela: GOOD
Oscar: GREAT (4 out of 5)
Jordi: GOOD
Sasha: GOOD
Overall Scoring Average: 3.2 🧹CLEAN SCORECARD🧹
Some review copies were provided in this review, others were paid for.