Pinball M: The Definitive Review & Table Review Guide – UPDATED to include Camp Bloodbrook
October 11, 2024 5 Comments
Our Pinball FX and Pinball M reviews took a lot of playtime and revisions. If you enjoy what you read, or even if you hate it, please consider making a donation to your local food bank. For my American readers, you can find your closest one by using the search tool at Feeding America. A cash donation to your local food bank buys exponentially more food than donating canned goods. I also support Direct Relief, and in the aftermath of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, they could use some help. They have a page up just to explain their hurricane response. They’re worth it. Thank you, and enjoy the review. Or hate it.
PLEASE NOTE THAT NINTENDO SWITCH’S VERSION OF PINBALL M ISN’T SPECIFICALLY INCLUDED IN THIS FEATURE YET. WE WILL UPDATE BEFORE 2024 IS UP WITH ANY IMPORTANT NOTES ABOUT PINBALL M ON NINTENDO SWITCH. THIS FEATURE WILL BE UPDATED AS MORE MEMBERS OF MY TEAM SUBMIT THEIR RATINGS. THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE AND ENJOY THIS FULL REVIEW GUIDE TO PINBALL M!
LAST UPDATED – November 5, 2024
Camp Bloodbrook’s review is up!
Jordi’s rating for The Thing and Camp Bloodbrook are in.
A NEW GOLDEN AGE
For all the bitching and whining I’m about to do, we’re sort of in a new golden age of pinball. Pinball tables are probably second only to pool tables in terms of the most desirable high-end furniture-like gaming devices for family rec rooms or man caves. The problem is real pinball tables cost a LOT of money. Thousands and thousands of dollars for a noisy, heavy gaming device that plays one game, and one game only, forever. And that’s before you get to the hidden costs of owning a pinball table. They require maintenance. Waxing. Replacement of the rubber rings. And if something breaks down and you don’t know how to fix it yourself, it could cost quite a lot. They wear out too, and if something happens and the playfield is damaged, you either have to live with the damage or replace it entirely. That’s what our very own Dash had to do with his Swords of Fury table. He picked it up for $3,500, then needed to put an additional $1,500 to restore it. Pinball is a very expensive hobby.
Average cost of repairs for an old table, give or take.
With digital pinball, anyone can afford the fun of pinball without the cost or hassle. You can spend $7,000 to $12,000 to score a mint condition real life Addams Family table, or you can buy the digital version in Pinball FX for $9.99 that has the same playfield, same targets, same call-outs, and same ROM, and the physics are 85% to 90% there, and hopefully climbing (no Christopher Lloyd though, much like Pinball Arcade). To put this in perspective, a rubber ring replacement kit for a real life Addams Family will cost you over three times the cost of Addams Family on Pinball FX by itself. So, how much is that final 10% to 15% difference in realism worth to you? And I’ll sweeten the deal for you. In Pinball FX3, you could only play with true-to-life table dimensions on PC or Nintendo Switch. With Pinball FX and Pinball M, no matter what platform you’re on, vertical screen options are available and so easy to set up. So your $9.99 game of Addams Family goes from looking like this:
To looking like this:
Those screenshots both come from the same copy of Pinball FX on an Xbox Series X. Wow! As of this writing, there’s over 135 tables in Pinball FX and Pinball M, and while we rate five of Pinball FX’s tables OUT OF ORDER (none for Pinball M), every table can be played vertically. You can absolutely feel the difference, especially in shooting accuracy and timing. You don’t need an expensive digital table to do this, either. Just turn any TV or Computer monitor on its side and use any game controller. It works with Steam, Epic, PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch and every table can feel like you’re viewing a real pinball table. And, if you want the full DIY digital table with arcade flipper buttons, Pinball FX and Pinball M are excellent starting points. There’s a LOT of problems with Pinball FX and Pinball M, but the addition of universal vertical access overrides all of them and makes Zen’s output our favorite digital pinball experience. I’ll talk more about the problems with Zen’s adaptations of real life tables in the Pinball FX review, but all you need to know is by turning your monitor on its side, this:
Becomes this:
And you don’t have to spend a penny more to do it. Very cool.
WHY PINBALL M?
Zen Studios wanted blood, guts, and swearing in pinball. I mean, those things are already part of pinball when I play.. one way or another. But, adding those things to Pinball FX not only bumps that to an M rating, which I’m guessing almost certainly violates contracts they have with Disney regarding the Marvel/Star Wars licenses, but it would outright prevent release in some countries due to censorship laws. You’ll note that many of Pinball FX3/Pinball FX’s Williams pins have had superficial alterations to the artwork to remove anything risque. If I have to choose between them making changes so minuscule that neither Dad nor Angela could spot changes without being told what they were or not having the Star Wars/Marvel pins, I’ll take the Star Wars/Marvel pins and the “censored” artwork every time. But, making new pins that would potentially breach existing contracts they have AND cut off their ability to sell family-safe tables in some markets wasn’t an option until now. Zen’s solution is an entirely different pinball platform. The advertising and table selection suggests that this is really a horror-themed pinball program. As of this writing, 6 of the 8 available tables are themed around horror, with only Duke Nukem’s Big Shot Pinball and System Shock representing traditional M-rated games (and System Shock is pretty much horror too).
Is this necessary? Probably not, and weirdly enough, it’s Zen that proved that. A sanitized version of Pinball M’s best table, System Shock, is also on Pinball FX and plays identically. Wrath of the Elder Gods is also on both platforms, but.. well, one works and one doesn’t. We’ll get to that. But really, it’s just tables with cussing, boozing, and red paint smeared all around. In the case of a table like The Thing, it isn’t even all that gory and wouldn’t have taken that much modifying to earn a T rating or even E rating on Pinball FX. Just change the B-O-O-Z-E name to T-H-I-N-G, remove the red, beep the cussing, and it’s the same table. Even the Duke Nukem table isn’t that risque. We’re comfortable letting my 9 year old niece Sasha, heir apparent to this very blog, play everything on Pinball M so far. There’s nothing that isn’t too intense for a child to play while supervised by a grown-up. It’s pinball, for god’s sake. So, what other differences make Pinball M worth the download?
SPRUCE-UP YOUR COLLECTION
As you play and make progress, you earn in-game currency that can be used to buy custom upgrades to tables that have no effect on gameplay. You can change some of the sound effects, the look of the ball, the appearance of the motion trail that follows the ball, the room lighting, and the look of the cabinet housing the table (which only matters in the menu). I was slowly making progress on these until I posted a seventeen-trillion point game of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which gave me enough currency to buy everything (and level up my profile to the max level of 120) with 1,015 currency points to spare for Camp Bloodbrook later this month. If you’re into customizing pins, you’ll dig this a lot more than me. The only knock I have is that there’s no option to randomize the balls or sound effects. That would be nice.
There’s also power-ups for the arcade and campaign modes that, in a return to how they worked in Pinball FX3, require leveling-up. That means grinding. My family and I agree that we prefer Pinball FX’s way of doing it, where power-ups have a fixed value that doesn’t slowly upgrade as you accomplish menial tasks in the tables. It means we can compete on a fully level playfield right out of the hypothetical box without having to spend what could take over an hour to build up the boosts we want to use. This is one of those things that feels like it’s done to boost “engagement” without thinking of the ramifications that 99.999% of all owners will never bother and some might feel the work required isn’t worth the time or effort and give up on Pinball M altogether. The customization stuff is a good idea, but leveling-up boosts is forcing players to do busy work in order to be competitive on some leaderboards.
Five new challenges, three of which are fine, one of which is silly, and one of which is dumb.
NEW CHALLENGES/FEATURES
In addition to the usual rigmarole of 200 flip challenges or five minute challenges, Pinball M adds a whopping five new challenges to compete on. In Dread, you have one minute to score a benchmark of points. Reaching the benchmark adds a minute to the time and sets a new benchmark. This goes on until you run out of time. This is one of the good ones. So is Rescue, which is a race to see how fast you can reach a lone benchmark. Times, not scores, are posted to the leaderboard. The same goes for Survival, but that’s the worst of the five challenges, easily. In it, you have so much time to start building up your score before you start “bleeding points.” IE your score begins trickling away at an increasingly faster rate. Eventually, you’re bleeding points by the millions and games end in seconds. It’s just not fun. Madness has more going for it. It’s a unique multiball challenge that utilizes whatever the table’s max is, but it’s NOT a quick pass to the wizard mode. Instead, the more lights you shoot, the faster the values of jackpots increase. This is insane, chaotic, and everyone’s favorite new challenge. Yes, even me. And then there’s Shiver, which is “pinball in the dark. Practically blind!” Here’s what it looks like:
Pretty lame, Millhouse. Now, your mileage may vary depending on how bright your settings are, but since the table’s lights still work, come on, you’re not going to miss much. But hey, three-for-five ain’t bad. The challenges are also part of the new campaign mode. The campaign missions are mostly easy (some can be finished in literally under one second), and they’re not that hard to complete. In fact, we’ve only missed getting one completed on the high level. It’s a Survival challenge for Texas Chainsaw Massacre that requires you to stay alive for four minutes. By time you reach 3:30 – 3:50, you’re bleeding MILLIONS of points every second. I shot the lights out one game and still came four seconds short. Dad and Sasha both put up similar numbers when THEY shot the lights out. Under 20 people in the world have cleared this, according to the leaderboard. We will. We just have to wait for Angela. Anyway, it’s all about the tables.
TABLE REVIEWS
Our system is simple.
MASTERPIECE – Our best score. 5 out of 5.
GREAT – Better than GOOD, not quite a MASTERPIECE.
GOOD – Even though this is the lowest passing grade, it’s still a passing grade.
BAD – A table that particular rater thought wasn’t deserving of an overall positive rating.
THE PITS – The reviewer felt the table has little to no redeeming qualities.
I then average the scores, and if the average is 3.6 to 4.5, the table is awarded a Certificate of Excellence. My team has agreed a Certificate of Excellence winner is worth the price of a $14.99 set by itself. If it’s a stand alone table that costs $14.99, get it, because it’s a very, VERY fun table. A table that scores higher than 4.5 enters the Pantheon of Digital Pinball. These are the cream of the crop. The elite. Very few tables make it in. As of this writing, Zen has only made four non-Williams tables that entered the Pantheon. They are Star Wars: Battle of Mimban, Star Wars: Clone Wars, Epic Quest, and Fear Itself, with Mimban being our near-unanimous choice for Zen’s best table ever. Their versions of Attack from Mars, Medieval Madness, Getaway: High Speed II and the Pinball FX3 build of Monster Bash are also Pantheon Inductees. But, one more Zen creation might enter the Pantheon today, hint hint. A table that receives all positive scores but isn’t good enough to be certified excellent is still awarded a Clean Scorecard, which is pretty hard to get. A Clean Scorecard means we think it’s a safe bet the average player will enjoy the table more than dislike it. And finally, a table that scores an average of under 1.5 is declared a Certified Turd, but as of this writing, no Pinball M table is even that close to it.
Camp Bloodbrook
Coming October 24, 2024
Designed by Daniel “Dolby” Vigh
Stand Alone Release ($4.99)
They should have armed the killer with a nail file because this sucker can file off serial numbers like no other.
I assume that Zen Studios started preliminary work on a Friday the 13th table only to find out they weren’t getting the license. Instead of repurposing it, Police Force style, they just made a generic masked slasher table set at a lake. I’m all for it, and my only question is why didn’t you do that with Jaws? Without the music, hell, it could be ANY shark attack table, right? Anyway, Bloodbrook is Dolby Vigh’s best table yet and one of Pinball M’s best tables. While we currently consider the Pinball FX build to be so busted that we classify it OUT OF ORDER, the Pinball M version works great. The difference is in the mode start locker.
Signature Shot – Mode Start Locker: In Pinball FX, in “realistic physics” mode, this locker will drop the ball straight down the middle, right between the flippers, with alarming consistency. That doesn’t happen in Pinball M. In fact, this is a good shot in Pinball M.
Ignore the name. This IS the Friday the 13th table everyone has expected since Pinball M was announced, and it does a much better job with theme integration than anything in the Death Save Bundle. In fact, as far as horror goes, only Texas Chainsaw Massacre is better at matching a pinball layout to movie theme. The use of two dead end lanes on a single table, one for starting modes and one themed as a lake (it’s so small it looks more like a kiddie pool) adds to a sense of claustrophobia, but in a good way. This layout slaps, as the kids say. A multitude of good to great shots, but the fun stops there. Camp Bloodbrook speaks volumes about how far you can get simply by having a mistake-free layout. Pretty dang far. As if it’s channeling the spirit of 90s Gottlieb, it’s the ROM and the scoring system that nearly takes a machete to Camp Bloodbrook.
Signature Shot – The Lake: I get that the lake shot has to be round for the canoe spinner to work, but how many lakes are perfectly round? Immersion BROKEN. I kid. Actually, it IS satisfying to spin the canoe, though like so many aspects of Camp Bloodbrook, it’s underutilized. It’s just a glorified ball lock that doubles as a lane shot for the various modes. If you’re going to have water on a table, you need a satisfying splash down, or what’s the point? Zen has done it well before, or at least I think so. I personally find Pacific Rim’s splash down satisfying, something my family vehemently disagrees about. We’re all in agreement that Camp Bloodbrook’s water is missing something. Having Not-Jason snatch the ball would be nice for a third ball lock, but I don’t think it works for the first and second. It would be neat if each of the three ball locks did something different. Also, the release for Lake Multiball is lame too, but the actual shot itself is nice. One of the few Zen Studios shots where a backhand is consistently effective.
Bloodbrook’s modes are pretty average and underwhelming overall. This table reminded me a LOT of Chucky’s Killer Pinball. It’s so close that, if it were a cookie, it feels like it was made out of the same batter. It even has the mode where the antagonist walks onto the table and you have to shoot lanes without accidentally shooting him, only it’s a poorer version of it. Unlike Chucky, “the killer” of Camp Bloodbrook takes quite a while to lumber into place before the shot becomes lit. It’s annoying. This happens in the wizard mode too, where the instructions specifically tell you the object is to shoot him, but he’s not, for lack of a better term “lit”, until he waddles to his designated spot. There’s four main modes, one of which is shooting the bad guy, followed by a final mode where you once again shoot the bad guy, followed by a wizard multiball. The modes are NOT balanced, so they probably should have been forced to be played in sequential order. In fact, the fourth mode, Escape Plan, pays off so much and has so many lit shots (where even the false lights are worth a million points) that all four Vices play it first.
Signature Targets – STORM! Targets: Angela said the placement of the live multiplier targets and the ease of use makes these shots “like rewarding bricks.” It’s absolutely true that you can light these mostly via missing the actual lanes themselves. BUT, I like that for a reason. Sometimes I’ll find myself at the end of a mode and I’ll notice that I’m only one or two of the S-T-O-R-M-! targets away from activating the 3x scoring multiplier. It becomes mighty tempting to try and activate the multiplier before completing the mode for a windfall of points. Dolby’s Thing table has a similar set-up, but the table doesn’t blow wind that messes with the ball in Camp Bloodbrook. Also, it’s much easier to activate this multiplier because the lights don’t turn off if you shoot them a second time. We were split on if this was a good choice, or if it’s TOO powerful. Oscar really thinks x3 was too much and a progressive that starts at 1.1 to 1.5 and grows with each new STORM! activated would have been preferable. I agree that x3 throws the balance off too much, especially since the modes themselves aren’t even close to balanced, and would have been fine with it being x2 scoring. But, x3 it is, and I enjoyed the targets more than I disliked them.
The live multiplier is pretty much it for high scoring. There’s no progressive scoring for completing the modes, and doing well in the modes doesn’t enhance scoring in the wizard. In Angela’s Xbox world record-setting game (2,311,291,577), she completed multiple full mode cycles, and was scoring the same throughout, and part of the reason why she started playing recklessly (she had earned four extra balls on her third ball), was she just got bored. The shame is, this is probably the least difficult of any of Dolby’s pins too, but without dynamic scoring mechanics, it gets old. Even x3 scoring gets boring if the modes pay off the same whether you’re on your first cycle or seventh. The only progressive-scoring mode seems to be Lake Multiball. And that mode only consists of two shots: the lake and the ramp directly left of the lake. They probably kept the overall scoring low and non-progressive because the STORM! x3 buff isn’t very hard to trigger. By the way, for all my complaints, we all REALLY liked Camp Bloodbrook. While I didn’t love the rule sheet, there’s no grinding and it doesn’t fundamentally feel like it takes forever to do anything. All the side-modes go super fast. The pace works, if not the scoring itself. I might not consider Bloodbrook to be Dolby’s best, but by scoring average, it easily is.
Cathy: GREAT (4 out of 5)
Angela: GREAT
Oscar: GREAT
Sasha: GREAT
Jordi: MASTERPIECE (5 out of 5)
Scoring Average: 4.2 – CERTIFIED EXCELLENT
Chucky’s Killer Pinball
Released November 30, 2023
Designed by Zoltan Vari
Set: Death Save Bundle ($19.99)
Links: Pinball FX Wiki
Kickback – Jordi: As Chucky says: “If they don’t let us play, they all go away.” This table doesn’t let me play. The skill shot makes no sense since it’s undervalued and overly risky, but it’s only the first of many killer issues on this table, and I don’t mean that in the “killer, dude! Radical!” way. The central Voodoo targets are designed to return the ball straight down the middle, and the right orbit is absolutely lethal if the ball doesn’t make it all the way up there. So many balls go just over the right flipper and down the drain, and with how unreliable nudging is with the new engines (shared by both Pinball FX and Pinball M) defense is nearly impossible. I really wanted to like this table. When a mode works well, it is not a grind unlike in most of Zen’s new tables, the theming is spot on, and there are so many references here that just work. Sadly, Chucky is let down by a table that refuses to let me play even a single session without stealing a ball or two. “Are we having fun now?” No.
Despite the blood, swearing, and innuendos, Chucky’s Killer Pinball feels like it could have been an ideal trainer table. Chucky is a smooth shooter with multiple satisfying shots, the greatest of which SHOULD have been a humped ramp themed like a roller coaster that’s always a thrill to complete. The problem is it doesn’t always complete, and there’s no rhyme or reason why sometimes it doesn’t make it over the second hump or not. Since it’s the finale of the Tiffany mode, and completing the full circuit is the first jackpot in multiball, it’s kind of important that you can’t count on a shot working every time. The weird thing is, we weren’t 100% sure whether or not the point was to create a ramp circuit that could only be completed off a batted shot or not. If it was deliberate, it’s a very bad idea. If the intent was that the ball should finish the circuit every time, it’s just a run of a mill fail. What a shame. That should have been a historically awesome shot. To make up for it, the sequence shot used to lock balls is one of Zen’s finest ideas. You have to shoot the left side’s locker, which triggers a razor blade flipper that then bats the ball up into the lock. SO satisfying to hit, except it goes back to that circuit that doesn’t always complete. PLEASE fix that, Zen. It needs it!
Signature Mode – Marble Prank: I don’t know what to make of this multiball mode. The concept is unique: after so many bangs of the bumpers, a jar full of marbles rises onto the playfield near the Voodoo targets. When you break the jar, it releases five glass marbles onto the playfield that behave like faster mini-balls. If you can hit the marbles hard enough with the pinball, it breaks them for a million points each plus a million for each marble broken so far. The other extermination method is to use the razor flipper to fling them at the multiball lock, which is 10M + 10M instead. It sounds great, but the problem is the jar hangs directly over the drain, and it’s not rare for several of the marbles to immediately drain. While the pinball has ball save the entire time the mode is going, the marbles don’t. A neat mode but not worth the effort, really.
Originally, the Vices all had Chucky’s Killer Pinball rated at GREAT, but the more we played it, the less we liked it. While the roller coaster not working every time is what sealed Chucky’s fate, all it really did was make all the little annoyances stand out that much more. Like the VOO-DOO targets resetting if you accidentally start another mode. I already hated them anyway. Vari-targets are my least favorite type of pinball shot, and this has not one, not two, but THREE that act as the mode start and hang right over the drain. Yes, there’s a ball save that protects you, but only if you push one in all the way. There’s repetitive callouts galore (we adore Brad Dourif and Jennifer Tilly, but even they become annoying after saying the same stuff over and over) or blood splatter blocks your view during the Marble Prank. Most of all, Chucky’s Killer Pinball features scoring so imbalanced that it assured Oscar cement his rating to GOOD even if they fix the coaster. Jordi was right about the skillshot leaving a lot to be desired. Going off his body of work, I suspect Zoltan Vari isn’t a big fan of skillshots in general. Chucky’s is a difficult to clock, super high-risk skillshot, and when we actually got it, we were stunned by how little value it is for the challenge and risk it involves. It certainly tracks with the rest of the table’s poor factoring-in of risk and reward. Dad ain’t wrong about that.
Signature Mode – Olly Olly Oxen Free: Of the three main modes, this is the worst, easily. In it, Chucky jumps onto the playfield and you have to avoid hitting him. A single hit ends the mode. This is potentially problematic because the game doesn’t just give you the ball to start. It kind of sideswipes it towards players, so that it reaches the flippers as chaotically as possible. Because, say it with me, “Zen Studios’ designers are hostile towards ball control.” Well, sometimes the ball might hit the slingshots and violently fling around the table until the ball pops up and hits Chucky, ending the mode before you even get your first shot. Yea, getting hit by the slingshots counts as “shooting him.” To the game’s credit, this is extremely rare, but it’s a completely unnecessary thing to happen in the first place. Just give players the ball! I’d say half the time the ball ends up in the drain before your first shot, though it doesn’t instantly kill-off the ball save. I have a feeling they realized how badly some aspects of Chucky handle and used ball save as a band aid instead of a feature. System Shock is like that too.
Other than the mode in the caption above, Chucky’s modes are pretty well done. No grinding. They make use of the full table. If there’s a downside, it’s that each of the three main modes is a “tour the table” type of mode, only done slightly differently. “Chucky Says” is just “hit the lit shot” and nothing more. It’s not timed differently. It doesn’t play differently. It’s too simple. I would have preferred the modes play out sequentially like Getaway: High Speed II, but I’m not going to complain too much about a table that does what we want: have fun, non-grindy modes. And the wizard mode is a ton of fun. Spoiler: you hack Chucky up bit by bit, and it’s awesome. Chucky’s table is really well done in many aspects, so we REALLY want to give this table higher scores. But, until the coaster’s fix is in, we really can’t. If it was intentional, GOOD is Chucky’s ceiling (unless you’re Angela. She LOVES that it’s hard to complete the circuit. She insists it makes it more exciting). Also, yea, I’m pretty peeved that this is one of the few tables I put a MAJOR marathon into with a world record pace only to have the game glitch out and start taking away points from me instead of adding them. I wouldn’t have reconsidered my score, but my GOOD would be a very enthusiastic one. Even though this wasn’t our highest-rated pin, we want to make it clear: the lack of grinding and quick modes are a very positive thing. More of THAT please, Zen! The best thing I can say about Chucky’s Killer Pinball is it feels like the prototype that gave us System Shock. Worth it!
Cathy: GOOD
Angela: GREAT
Oscar: GOOD
Jordi: BAD
Dash: GOOD
Sasha: GOOD
Elias: BAD* (Nintendo Switch)
Overall Scoring Average: 3.0 – GOOD
*Nintendo Switch Scores not factored into average. This will be updated at a later time.
Dead by Daylight
Released November 30, 2023
Designed by Gergely “Gary” Vadocz
Set: Death Save Bundle ($19.99)
Is it ironic that this is a pinball table licensed on one of the most license-heavy video games ever made?
Dull by Daylight, according to Angela and Oscar, is the worst Pinball M table so far. Hell, it’s the only table among the original five launch tables that doesn’t have its own Pinball FX Wiki page as of this writing. It’s second-to-last for me. A slog of a pin in desperate need of some spit shine. On literally our first shot ever taken on this table, Angela valleyed the skillshot, and no amount of nudging could free it. Even after patchwork, in the final sweep of tables before we published this feature, we valleyed balls on the tall ramp, and the only difference seemed to be a gentle nudge dislodges the ball now. While it might not break the table, it speaks volumes to how unpolished this one is. Plus it has some of the most frustrating rails and outlanes around. Even when the ball seems like it doesn’t have the energy to carry on, it still manages to crawl across the rails and slither down the outlane. This on a pin where nudging feels especially ineffective. But, none of that matters, because Dead by Daylight has a much, much bigger problem: it’s just a boring table. One of those instances where the shot selection is less than the sum of its parts.
CORRECTION: In the original review, I said the patched table valleyed the skillshot. That was wrong. Originally, we were valleying (coined by Oscar from a term borrowed from roller coaster lingo meaning “gets stuck midway through the circuit” that we’re trying to add to the pinball lexicon) on the skill shot, but that doesn’t happen anymore. Instead, the valleys happen at the top of the tall ramp. Sorry for the mix-up.
Signature Feature – Survivor/Killer Loadouts: Dead by Daylight is one of those tables where you choose a buff before the game starts, just like the video game it’s based on. Survivor mode has four, while Killer has three. Oscar is a big fan of the concept of loadout buffs, provided they’re balanced enough that there’s not one logical choice. The loadouts you can choose for every Pinball M’s arcade mode (IE enhanced multiball, bumpers, ball save, etc.) have this problem. According to Dad’s theory, if you had a 100 different buffs and 98 were weak and only two were beneficial but equally balanced, it’d still be worth it because it means players have a legitimate choice with pros and cons that can be tailored to the player. On the flip side, if you have seven choices, six of which are equally balanced with each-other while one stands out as the no-brainer choice for all players of all skill sets, it wrecks the whole concept. With that in mind, myself, Oscar, and Sasha decided to play a bunch of games with every load out, and all three of us consistently had our best standard games (Classic/Arcade) using KILLER – EASY SACRIFICE as our buff. I should note the one exception to this was I put up the #6 all-time arcade score with SURVIVOR- EASY SKILL CHECKS. This feels like a one-off fluke as my other games were all on the lower side with it. The other exception is the special challenges, where putting up points fast matters, in which case we all scored higher using SURVIVOR – FAST GENERATORS.
Dead by Daylight’s biggest problem is there’s just no good shots on the table and no sense of flow. Maybe that makes sense since the shots mostly represent distance closed in a cat and mouse chase regardless of which side you pick. This is what we call a “pick ‘n flick” because, despite the heavy use of hurry-ups, this is a game where you’ll want to trap the ball and aim carefully, because accuracy and not volume of shots will win the day. But, a pick ‘n flick table absolutely needs thrilling shots to succeed, and that’s not here. The closest it comes is smacking crates to increase your distance if you’re playing as a survivor, while the killer has a giant bear trap that you want to shoot before you start shooting orbits, since it leads to a faster capture. But even the bear trap is a massive let down. It’d be more fun to build a two ball multiball around it where it captures the first ball and then you have to smack it several times to open it back up. Oddly enough, the limited shot selection would make for a better multiball table if not for the aforementioned outlanes and rails. Oh and you have to shoot very bland drop targets that appear in the center of the table to score a capture.
Signature Mode- Survivors: It seems fairly unanimous in my house that playing as the Survivors instead of the Killer turns Dead by Daylight into a more well-rounded pinball game. There’s five generators that require a full table tour. They are (1) the spinner (2) flashing lanes (3) the marked sinkhole (4) the flashing lanes, again (5) the bumpers. What becomes annoying is the video mode “Skill Check” pauses a live ball. The video mode itself is quick. You just have to stop a meter in time, with a zone close to the edge scoring more points. But, the mode can interrupt play, and it’s even happened to us when the ball is on a flipper. When this happens, it can screw with your timing when the mode ends and play resumes. We’re honestly not sure if this was a deliberate choice or something that needs to be patched out, but assuming it’s a bug, it wouldn’t change any of our ratings.
The center loop that acts as the skillshot, the multiplier increase, and sometimes the key shot for modes is just too clunky to be satisfying. We split on whether the tall ramp in the center was too rejection-heavy or not. Actually, the argument was more about whether the rejections were based in reality or if it was just Unreal Engine living up to its name and throwing back shots that had the angle and velocity to complete the ramp. Unlike some faulty ramps in Pinball M or Pinball FX (the teardrop from Texas Chainsaw for example), I didn’t feel it was clear one way or another. I’m open to the possibility that the design is inherently flawed. Either way, this became one of Angela’s least favorite pins and she can’t believe we don’t consider Dead by Daylight to be Han Solo/Safe Cracker levels of bad.
Signature Shot – Bear Trap: Talk about a letdown. When we saw the bear trap for the first time, we were imagining the possibilities of how this could be used as a sick M-rated ball lock. Nope. You just clank it a few times until it opens, then you shoot lanes before it closes. That’s it. It’s not a ball catch. It’s not a decorated cellar. It’s a bland digital target, and nothing more.
The lack of targets and poor flow from shot to shot means that Dead by Daylight was fated to grow old quickly. Our suspicion is the limited shot selection was done to make the differences between Killer and Survivor more pronounced, and to Gary’s credit, the two modes do feel different enough, but Killer offers a lot less flexibility since it makes logical sense to arm the bear trap before shooting any other target. Individual strategy for that side of the equation begins and ends with what loadout you want. We spent the better part of two days playing this and trying to find the fun. Sasha liked it, as she felt the chase aspect worked well regardless of what side you choose, plus she liked the shot selection more than we did. The rest of us were just really bored. Dead by Daylight probably does an admirable job of feeling like the video game, but as a pinball table, it was dead on arrival.
Cathy: BAD
Angela: THE PITS
Oscar: BAD
Jordi: BAD
Sasha: GOOD
Elias: GOOD* (Nintendo Switch)
Scoring Average: 2.0 – BAD
*Nintendo Switch Scores not factored into average. This will be updated at a later time.
Duke Nukem’s Big Shot Pinball
First Released November 30, 2023
Designed by Grego “Rockger” Ezsias
Set: Death Save Bundle ($19.99)
Links: Pinball FX Wiki
Full Review at The Pinball Chick
Angela has dubbed this “Duke of Whirl” because of the merry-go-round. She’s a fan of rotating targets in general and thinks it’s one of the most underused concepts by Zen Studios. I pointed out that it wouldn’t be a big deal if it showed up regularly as a featured target. She said “why would the best type of target stop being fun?” We dueled to settle who was right. She won 4 to 0. She always wins.
Duke was a sort of breaking point for me, where I’d had all I could stand and I could stands no more. Zen has a tendency to go overboard with shot requirements, and they finally crossed the line of reason with Duke Nukem’s Big Shot Pinball. It’s as if someone at Zen is saying “why have a mode require five shots when it could instead require ten? Or hell, why not twenty?” And the answer is “because you also want to have hyperactive slingshots that are aimed right at the outlane and it’s not reasonable to expect someone to keep the ball alive during this.” I think Duke Nukem is a terrible table. Serial killer slingshots with hair triggers aimed right at the outlanes combined with modes that need their shot requirement clipped by 80% at least. A typical game consists of the ball hitting the slingshot and going into the outlane about six times, or possibly ricocheting off one of the many cardboard targets, skipping across the rails and going down the outlane. It’s all defense, all the time and it’s SO exhausting and boring. Every mode is that way.
Signature Mode – Kick Ass and Chew Bubblegum: In this video mode, you have to alternate between four channels and press the launch button three times when a target pops up. Do this twenty times. It’s not exactly a first person shooter, and the novelty of it looking like Duke Nukem 3D wears off pretty quickly. There’s no tension at all. Even when we’ve played it poorly, we’ve never fallen under 60% health. I imagine if someone had a stroke while they were playing this, or if they were attacked by swarms of murder hornets in the middle of a game, they might lose it. Maybe. Some of Zen’s video modes aren’t so bad. This thing is such an unfathomable slog to get through, and it has nothing at all to do with pinball. You know, that thing we’re here to play. I wouldn’t mind this if it lasted only a few seconds and involved shooting one enemy and maybe avoiding its fire, but it’s nothing like that. It’s just a shooting gallery with a generous amount of wiggle room.
By reputation, Duke Nukem is one of the hardest tables Zen has ever made. I have no problem with a hard table if it’s fun, but Duke Nukem also requires a massive grind to accomplish anything. Want to get an extra ball? Hit the NEST targets 100 times, which can only be shot off a toe shot right next to the drain and in which case the ball is likely to go off a slingshot and die, or get into the secret room ten times. How do you get into the secret room? Well, first you need a pipe bomb. How do you get a pipe bomb? You have to complete one of the three side modes. Oh, side modes? That sounds quick. What do you do? Well, for “I’m The Cure” you have to score 6 sinkholes in the merry go around, which has six slots, half of which don’t feed the sinkhole. You then enter an “alien nest” where you have to get 60 spins of the spinner. Then you get the pipe bomb? No, 60 spins spawns four more targets which raise up and down. THEN do you get the pipe bomb? Well, maybe. It’s a random award. Could be the pipe bomb. Could be something else. Doesn’t that sound like boring ass busy work? Uh, yea? And if you want that extra ball from the secret room, you only have to get lucky with the random award for all that work ten times over. You won’t be able to. See, the designer thought it would be hilarious if he aimed the slingshots at the outlanes and gave them a hair trigger. And also have the ball return sometimes come in from the side at a sharp, sideswiping angle that could go down the outlane or onto the slingshots which can also send the ball into the outlane. Having fun for your $19.99 for the Death Save Bundle yet?
Signature Shots – Cardboard Targets: The soldiers in front of the boss targets take multiple shots to kill, then the boss takes a ton of shots to kill. Hypothetical future bosses past the first one are even spongier AND and they have more minions in front of them AND those minions require more shots. Let’s pretend that Duke Nukem doesn’t have extremely lethal slingshots and kickbacks that require five shots each to light. Let’s pretend that you have a ball save lit the entire fight and instead the only factor during the boss fights is your health. That’s a thing that exists on this table, by the way, but don’t worry because you’ll die long before your health runs out anyway. But, pretend that health was the only factor and not the drain or outlanes. Wouldn’t shooting these static cardboard targets get boring anyway? It’s not like it’s two or three hits on each. The bosses can take as many as 18 shots to kill, and that’s after you get through the spongy minions in front of them. No shot on a boss counts until the minions are clear. Didn’t anyone stop and say “wait.. is this fun?” Because it’s not! It’s such a mindless chore that it’s practically a holistic lobotomy.
I’m sure that someone has gotten in the ear of Zen’s design team lineup and told them “making tables harder is good! Making it take as many shots as possible to get anything going is good! It increases engagement!” It actually doesn’t. At all. It just makes your table boring, so that people who aren’t in the pinball bubble like me, my family, and my friends won’t want to spend their time with it. So, how’s Duke Nukem’s ruthless difficulty working out for it? Well, a few minutes ago, I had a game of Duke Nukem’s Big Shot Pinball where I beat the first boss. So basically I finished a single mode. I completed zero side modes and made only one skill shot. That game, where I barely accomplished anything, is the 17th highest score on the Duke Nukem arcade mode leaderboard right now. Not for the week. It’s #1 for the week. It’s #17 all-time. One boss alone got me a top 20 all-time score. That’s engagement? Because to me, that sounds like Duke Nukem is a barren wasteland of non-engagement. BAD was too generous for a table that I’ve honestly never had even a tiny bit of fun on. I can’t rate a table based on the fun I could have had if its designer hadn’t made it such a slog to make anything happen. I can only rate the table as it exists, and I think Duke Nukem is currently the worst Pinball M table. I stand alone in my group on that opinion, but hey, I’m used to it. Just wait until you see the Knight Rider review.
Cathy: THE PITS
Angela: GOOD
Oscar: GREAT
Jordi: GOOD
Dash: GREAT
Sasha: GOOD
Elias: GOOD* (Nintendo Switch)
Scoring Average: 3.0 – GOOD
*Nintendo Switch Scores not factored into average. This will be updated at a later time.
System Shock
First Released February 15, 2024
Designed by Zoltan Vari
Stand Alone Release ($5.49)
Links: Pinball FX Wiki
If the mark of a truly magnificent licensed pinball table is one that makes non-fans of the featured property interested in finding out more about it, System Shock must be one of the very best digital pins ever. My father, now in his mid 70s, purchased the recent remake based on his experience playing Zen’s tribute to it. Fans will appreciate that they nailed the creepy menace of SHODAN and the sense of isolation, but you absolutely don’t need to be a fan of 1994 PC classic to enjoy the thrilling shots of what is easily Zoltan Vari’s greatest triumph (sorry Fear Itself). While the build we played had that expected launch-window Zen clunkiness, we still couldn’t put down our copies of Pinball FX and Pinball M, playing nearly a full week of duels. Eight months after its release, in October of 2024, we again couldn’t put it down. Few tables from Pinball FX or Pinball M are easily classified as a modern pinball triumph. System Shock is. In fact, there’s only one thing that takes it out of the conversation for best Zen Studios pin ever. So, let’s do a caption and get that out of the way.
Signature Brain Fart – Laser Mode & SHODAN Battle: In the annals of “what were they thinking?” this one is the most peculiar, because it’s so silly that I literally laughed. First off, let’s talk about Laser Mode. It’s one of four checkmarks players must knock out before the final battle with SHODAN. Getting to Laser involves completing the harrowing three-shot journey up the spiral tower (maybe add a fourth shot if you haven’t hit the Serv-Bot yet), at which point you play a brick breaker style video mode. That’s fine. It’s a fun mode. Well, it’s also the wizard mode and the final battle with video game icon SHODAN. The only difference is instead of killing two enemies, you have to hit SHODAN twenty times with the puck before you drop the puck twenty times. Yep, really. That’s the wizard mode. Presumably Zoltan Vari won a bet.
Oof. On a table where every angle, orbit, and ramp is fun to shoot, not having a tour-the-table wizard is almost beyond belief. Zen has a history of bad mini-tables, but given how amazing the layout and the shot selection is for System Shock, it’s a safe bet that ZV was on a roll and he could have pulled off a sick boss fight mini-table for this one. And yea, SHODAN’s value is potentially so high if you hit all nine targets (“collecting items”) on the roto target that it negates the rest of the table. BUT, since the Wizard is easy to get, we’re cool with it. Oddly enough, this might be the most generous Zen table ever. Not only are extra balls plentiful, but so are ball saves. The tower is the obvious center piece, but get this: there’s a target behind the entrance to the tower that activates a magnet that assists in teeing-up the ball for the bat flipper that shoots the tower AND gives you a split-second ball save if you drain within the next second and a half. That feature was hotly debated in the Vice Household regarding whether or not it nerfed the table too much. Oscar was THIS CLOSE to dropping his vote to GREAT. The fact that every Vice ultimately rated System Shock a MASTERPIECE should make it clear it wasn’t a deal breaker even for the challenge-frothing Oscar or Angela.
Signature Shots – The Tower: Actually, every Vice had their own “I almost dropped this from MASTERPIECE” feature. This was mine. Specifically, the second level of the tower. This both doubles as the super jackpot in multiball while also functioning as a crank which rotates the base of the tower. The base features stand-up targets that function as the tools you collect to increase the value of multiball and the final battle with SHODAN. There’s 9 total targets and 3 cellars that are the ball lock. The reason I almost dropped the score from MASTERPIECE is the crank has a tendency to go nuts. In theory, it should only do one quarter rotation when you hit it. But, it frequently goes more than one crank, or sometimes it’ll crank forward and then backwards. When you create experimental targets, things go wrong. It wasn’t a deal breaker by any means, and the more I thought about it, the more I questioned whether I was even frustrated by it. So, while it didn’t factor into my rating, I wouldn’t shed a tear if they fixed it so it was always a quarter-turn of the base. Also, and this is very nit-picky but I wish there was better representation of the nine tools you collect. Better use of lights that tells you which targets you haven’t hit, because you do have to hit all nine specific stand-ups on the roto-target, whereas any of the three sinkholes count towards a ball lock.
System Shock is that rare table where nearly every shot is thrilling. This is further enhanced by the fact that the four “modes” you must complete to open the SHODAN fight require minimum grinding. The one that requires the most work is probably “COMBO” where you have to shoot the front-right ramp several times, which places three unique balls as targets just above the flipper zone. Two are fakes that explode on contact while one is a real “rubber ball” with its own unique physics that must be sunk in the sinkhole above the right flipper. This lights the two front ramps, at which point a single crisscross combo gives you the COMBO light. It’s a lot of work and probably the toughest light to get, but it’s also a light you can get through natural progression instead of grinding. Oddly, after you’ve finished the wizard, you can skip all the steps I listed above except the single crisscross combo to relight it. The second wizard takes a LOT less time to reach. There’s a small but very annoying (not to mention potentially game ruining) glitch attached to it if you’re playing one of the modes that allows you to use the Ball Save buff. If you screw up hitting the real ball before time runs out and you have a maxed-out Ball Save buff, it could take five or more minutes before you get another shot. Another annoyance is sometimes, when shooting the final shot that earns you the “REACTOR” light, the ball begins slowing down as it starts to “complete the shot” only for it to fall back down. In theory, you should be home free once it reaches the point where it slows down since it seems to be something that the game does and not the physics of your hit.
Signature Mode – Cyborg Attack: I have a gut feeling that it didn’t used to be four checkmarks before fighting SHODAN. My hunch tells me it started as five, and this was the fifth. In it, you have to just shoot the same front-left ramp you’ve shot multiple times to activate it. This also happens to be the hardest mode in System Shock. Nothing else is even close. Oscar calls this a Fastest Gun in the West type of mode because you don’t really have time to set-up shots. You have to ready and aim yourself in a split second, because when the cyborg locks onto your ball, it fires a laser at the ball which sends it flying. Try trapping and even if you begin the shot by letting go of the flipper, the Cyborg will hit the ball, which is a big outlane risk at that point, and it also halts all other modes while the attack is going. Cyborg Attack only awards a nominal amount of points. but the real reward for it is it lights valuable magna saves. This is a prime example of well thought out risk/reward. It was wise to have this be separate from the main modes thanks to the difficulty spike, as was attaching a genuinely desirable award to it. You can even earn the right to stack additional magna saves if you complete mode. Fantastic. More of this type of thoughtfulness with side modes, please.
The worst thing most of us accuse System Shock of is being a flawed MASTERPIECE. That still makes it a MASTERPIECE and, statistically speaking, the best table in Pinball M so far. The only other table in Pinball M that has even a MASTERPIECE vote from anyone on my team is Texas Chainsaw Massacre (two of them, in fact). Only System Shock stands tall as a table entering the Pantheon of Digital Pinball. Oscar said that System Shock reminded him of the pace Getaway: High Speed II has, only if the modes were non-linear. He’s not wrong. Not that System Shock shoots as well as Getaway, but what does? I want to stress once more that you certainly don’t have to be a fan of the original game to enjoy this pin. My father had never played System Shock and Angela and Sasha had never even heard of it. If you feel old now, you’re having the right reaction. But, this is exactly the type of licensed table Zen should be doing. Non-punishing. Easy to understand objectives. No grinding. A table even an average player should be able to finish. But also a table with strategic flexibility and options that measure risk and reward. Sure, you can postpone getting multiball until you collect all nine tools, but if you drain, game over. System Shock offers that constantly. It’s Zoltan Vari’s best table and, indeed, the best Pinball M has offered yet. So naturally it’s also on Pinball FX as well. Go figure.
Cathy: MASTERPIECE
Angela: MASTERPIECE
Oscar: MASTERPIECE
Jordi: MASTERPIECE
Dash: GOOD*
Sasha: MASTERPIECE
Elias: MASTERPIECE** (Nintendo Switch)
Scoring Average: 4.71 🏛️PANTHEON INDUCTEE🏛️
*This feature will be updated as soon as Dash gets time to explain his GOOD rating. He’s been swamped with work stuff.
**Nintendo Switch Scores not factored into average. This will be updated at a later time.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
First Released June 6, 2024
Designed by Zoltan “Hezol” Hegyi
Stand Alone Release ($5.49)
Read the full review at The Pinball Chick
John Larroquette’s opening narration from the original movie is here. They got that, so how come they couldn’t get him to do the callouts, too? Just call his cell and ask “hey, can you say MULTIBALL into the phone and maybe MULTIPLIERS INCREASED? What’s this for? We’re doing a pinball table based on Night Court and you’re the only cast member still alive. No, we’re not counting Karen Austin. Hello? Helllllo?”
Texas Chainsaw is currently the #2 ranked Pinball M table, and it’s certainly worth the $5.49 asking price because it’s not possible to get bored with it. The longest single game of pinball I’ve ever played in my entire life was on Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s arcade mode. I gamed the boost level-up system by maxing-out BALL SAVE, then I reached the wizard mode. With the fully-charged ball save boost, I only needed to convert one shot every ninety seconds or so to keep the ball save lit. After a ten hour long wizard mode (including all the breaks I took to ice my hands, and I’m not even kidding), I was the world champion, and then I laid down the next four balls instead of risking Pinball M crashing. There’s not a lot of tables I would play for ten hours straight. It’d be boring, even if I was on a world record pace. That alone speaks volumes to how amazing Chainsaw’s shot selection is. We were rough on newcomer Hezol’s first table, A Samurai Vengeance, but you could see this guy was going to be legit too. Chainsaw proves it.
Persistent Problem – Physics: When ramps in Pinball M or Pinball FX go bad, it’s usually very bad. For example, the teardrop ramp, which is a pretty big shot on this table. It opens a mode and it’s the skillshot. But, the ramp doesn’t work sometimes. I don’t know if it’s too steep or too tight a curve, but we’ve broken it more than once, and thankfully we got a clip of it. Not only did the ball get stuck when it should have had the speed to clear the ramp, but the ball began wiggling. How does a ball wiggle on an incline? It never stopped, either. The clip doesn’t show it but the ball was stuck wiggling at roughly the same speed for quite a while. The wiggle prevented the ball from resetting, and it was jammed so badly that nudging wouldn’t knock it loose. I almost tilted trying to. In fairness, this happened during a silly challenge in the game’s campaign mode. Had this happened during the (former) world record game, I’m not even sure I would have remembered it.
Besides the teardrop ramp, every shot is well-placed and properly satisfying. The highlight is the subtle but sweet chainsaw ramp. It’s one of the shorter ramps in Pinball FX or Pinball M, but it’s also brilliantly angled and works as both a traditional shot and as a toy. The severed head moves along a diagonal track but never feels like it’s angled in a trollish way. The “set ’em up, knock ’em down” modes where you bank points that you then earn via a “massacre” jackpot is an inspired concept, and the only downside is that they don’t pay off enough. Oscar wasn’t a fan of the score imbalance, as he feels the modes were a little more than checklists to get you to the high scoring multiball and wizard modes. When I countered “so does every table, including System Shock” he said fired back with “the shots aren’t as good as System Shock.” They’re really not, but it’s a safe bet that some people will find the shots too conservative and bland. Thankfully there’s minimal grinding and Chainsaw has one of the easier-to-reach wizards Zen has done. That was very wise, given the lack of value for standard modes. Had the scoring been more balanced, this would be a contender for the Pantheon. I think that Hezol is going to work out just fine.
Cathy: GREAT
Angela: GREAT
Oscar: GOOD
Jordi: GREAT
Sasha: MASTERPIECE
Elias: MASTERPIECE* (Nintendo Switch)
Scoring Average: 4.16 CERTIFIED EXCELLENT
*Nintendo Switch Scores not factored into average. This will be updated at a later time.
The Thing
First Released November 30, 2023
Designed by Daniel “Dolby” Vigh
Set: Death Save Bundle ($19.99)
Links: Pinball FX Wiki
The weirdest thing is that Zen’s Godzilla table looks colder than this table that’s literally surrounded by ice. Oh and please note that, right now, only the ratings for the main version of Thing are from the four Vices. This review will be updated in late October, 2024 when the review for Camp Bloodbrook is added.
The consensus seems to be that either Thing or Dead by Daylight was the worst table of Pinball M’s launch. Personally, I’d rather play either of those over Duke Nukem, but to each their own. I don’t think Thing is that bad. It’s a very frustrating table, and one I’m not enthused enough with to argue too passionately in favor of, but bad? Nah. My pops and I are in total agreement: Thing has something going for it, though it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what that is. One thing about THE Thing that we all agreed on was the layout didn’t do the movie justice. A traditional Japanese fan layout probably wasn’t the right way to go for a pin based on this specific flick. The 1982 John Carpenter film is one of the most imaginative horror movies of all time. How does it do it? Claustrophobia. What is the Thing pinball table? A vast, wide open playfield where every made shot can be followed-up by almost any other orbit. In pinball terms, that’s the literal opposite of claustrophobia. Hell, the Dead by Daylight table would have been a more accurate representation of The Thing’s tone than this. I get a lot of guff from my friends, family, and readers for not putting more stock into theme integration. I think it’s rarely notable unless a table does exceptionally good or exceptionally bad. Thing is exceptionally bad, at least in terms of replicating the emotions of the film, and I say that while noting that I think it’s an okay pinball table.
Persistent Problem – Bad Mini-Tables: Zen Studios has a mini-table problem, and the only good thing I can say about Thing’s mini is that at least it’s not another bland-ass circular table. I get that Dolby was probably aiming to replicate the tight, claustrophobic vibe of the movie with this mini’s shots, but it’s too tight, too limited, and over too fast. If Zen is going to keep insisting on having mini-tables, they should allow players to practice them off the menu instead of having to play a practice game and grind your way to them. Actually, I wish they overhauled their practice mode altogether. Basketball players looking to improve their free throw shooting don’t have to play entire games for the opportunity. They just go up to the line and shoot during practice. Let us do that for all your modes and shots. Do that and you’ll see scores increase across the board.
The real problem with Thing is basically the same problem all tables by Daniel “Dolby” Vigh have, to the point that I could probably cut and paste this review from any other review of his tables: punishing difficulty to the point that it becomes exhausting instead of exciting. Slingshots with hair triggers that only need a single pop to send the ball flying into outlanes faster than you can nudge to defend against it, not that the nudge is all that effective. A ramp’s wall hover directly over the drain in a way designed to funnel balls from the bumper zone straight down the drain, and since it’s right over the middle, often a nudge can’t save you anyway. Sharp toe shots being too essential to the gameplay. Rails where the ball constantly gets cruel bounces instead of kind ones. Modes that take far too many shots to complete given the extreme difficulty. I’m talking about The Thing, but that could apply to Snoopy, Kong, World War Z, Terraforming Mars, and Princess Pride. All middling tables at best, but in six tables he’s not yet gotten his first Certificate of Excellence, and World War Z we consider one of the worst tables in Pinball FX, and I think Princess Bride is just a boring slog. The shame about all this is I think Dolby has the chops to craft great shots. I think Terraforming Mars is far and away his best pin, but I’m not finishing modes on that either. Going off the leaderboards, not many people are. If players are quitting before accomplishing anything in your pin, that shouldn’t be a badge of honor. They’re not giving up because of the difficulty. It’s because it’s boring.
Persistent Problem – Blocked Shots: The physics engine of Pinball FX and Pinball M is far from perfect. The bounce you get off objects never feels quite natural. Often the ball just goes limp, as if the target was heavily padded. Consequently, it’s unpredictable what even an aimed shot will do. This becomes a problem when any Zen designer creates a table that’s ultra-punishing of missed shots, then has modes where targets block the orbits. When you really think about it, it’s a rejection that counts as make, isn’t it? But, logically wouldn’t the ball be likely to react the same way as the average miss or rejection? Uh, yea! If a table has angles and shot placement designed to increase the likelihood of a near-miss draining or outlaning, it feels like digital targets are artificial difficulty taken to an extreme degree.
The thing with Dolby’s pins is that high scores feel lucky instead of skillful. Like after dozens of games, I finally had one where the bounces fell my way. Maybe if the physics were completely overhauled, this wouldn’t be so bad. But Thing even has a mode where wind pushes the ball left and right. A table like Zen’s own Jaws can get away with that, but not a table like Thing that’s specifically meant to be as punishing as humanly possible. I don’t think Dolby is completely misguided in this stuff. For all the sh*t I’ve given him over this mentality, he’s only made one table that’s unambiguously a trash fire: World War Z (and likely Princess Bride too, but we’re waiting for patches before writing-up the final review). My team has awarded CLEAN SCORECARDS to Kong, Snoopy, and Terraforming Mars, meaning those pins didn’t get a single negative rating. I even gave TM a rating of GREAT, and so did Angela. He’s not a hack. But he has to decide if he wants to be the guy that makes tables so difficult the ceiling of enjoyment is low or if he wants to be elite. Nobody accuses Steve Ritchie of making soft tables, but they didn’t feel like they only exist to ice players right out of the starting gate.
Persistent Problem – Out of Reach Wizards: It’s not hard to figure out how many players have reached the wizard mode in any given pin. You just reach the wizard in the Practice Mode, look at your score, and see how many players are in the ballpark of that score on the leaderboard. The above screenshot is Thing’s Wizard, and you can see I have about 136M, so if you give me 30M to account for extra stuff I did, we’ll say 100M is the “range.” For The Thing exactly 20 players EVER have scored over 100,000,000 points in Classic Mode, and not all of them presumably reached the Wizard unless they both somehow shot VERY efficiently while also losing their balls immediately after completing modes. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s 12 to 15 wizards and 5 more who were close. Out of everyone who has bought the original bundle of table. That shouldn’t be a positive thing for designers. Oh, and you can’t use the achievements as a barometer because they were broken for a long time and didn’t work, but for what it’s worth, 0.02% of all players on Xbox have the achievement for the wizard mode in Thing. We don’t have it. Comparatively, that’s exactly the same percentage for Pinball FX’s Xena: Warrior Princess, Battlestar Galactica, and Knight Rider, all of which we have earned. This should be alarming. Again, I assume their designers had it pounded into their skulls “extreme difficulty and mind-numbing grinding is good for engagement” when all evidence says that’s just not the case and you’re boring players away, and when they’re bored away, they probably ain’t coming back for non-Williams pins no matter what license you guys score. I want Pinball FX and Pinball M to stick around, but stuff like this worries me.
The main modes last so long they become boring, and if you fail them, they don’t stay lit. On a table with so many drain angles, that’s a recipe for a middling pinball experience. The side modes aren’t much better. Like there’s a mode where a fire spreads from lane to lane and hitting shots puts the fire out. Only it might relight less than a second later. I can’t imagine why people are frustrated with Zen Studios pins lately. People like challenges, myself included, but after a while it just becomes demoralizing and a downer to play. I was sure I’d be giving this a score of BAD, but once I moved off the standard CLASSIC mode and onto ARCADE, the table had a lot less lethal angles and the outlanes weren’t so murderous. Was it actually fun? It was okay, and I’ll take okay. Now if Zen Studios is happy with okay, that’s troubling. Also, while stringing together the orbits was satisfying, that’s always satisfying regardless of the pin. Modes are what makes each table unique, and Thing’s modes are just alright. Dolby, you have got it in you to go down in history as one of the best pinball designers of the 21st century. You don’t suck, but some of your tables do, and they didn’t have to. It speaks volumes that a table as unlikable as Thing still won me over because it shoots pretty good. I think you have a gift, Daniel. And if you squander it, it’s on you, because everyone is waiting for you to make a table that cares more about being fun than it does being hard.
Cathy: GOOD
Angela: BAD
Oscar: GOOD
Sasha: BAD
Jordi: GOOD
Elias: BAD* (Nintendo Switch)
Primary Scoring Average: 2.6 – OKAY AT BEST
*Nintendo Switch Scores not factored into average. This will be updated at a later time.
Wrath of the Elder Gods: Director’s Cut
First Released November 30, 2023
Designed by Gary Vadócz
Links: Pinball FX Wiki
Free to Play with Pinball M Installation
Kickback – Angela: Elder Gods just edges out Chucky to earn my vote for the second best Pinball FX table so far. And it’s free! What’s unique about this pin is that Wrath of the Elder Gods feels much more like a modern Stern-era arcade release in terms of the pace of the modes. Nothing lasts too long, and the table is equal parts offense and defense. Although the left outlane is a touch on the gnarly side, Elder Gods has an effective nudge and kickbacks that aren’t a chore to light, so playing defense isn’t fighting windmills. I really don’t get everyone’s problem with the multiball. So what if it’s a snap-shooter? It’s a shooter’s table! How else would you wizard it? Wrath of the Elder Gods proves Zen can still make fun-for-everyone pinball tables when they don’t go overboard with grinding or shot requirements. It might not be the best table in Pinball M right now, but I think it better represents their potential than System Shock.
The paid version of Wrath of the Elder Gods on Pinball FX has physics and orbits so busted that it’s one of only five tables on Pinball FX we’ve declared to be OUT OF ORDER. Thankfully, the free-to-play, M-rated version of Wrath of the Elder Gods mostly works. And it’s, you know, fine. I think they were aiming for “eerie” and did a good enough job with it. Oddly, you’d expect a Lovecraft-themed table to be a little slower and more deliberate, but the opposite is true. This could have just as easily been themed around the Road Runner because the ball runs so fast. It’s what we call a “Kinetic” pin because the speed and the angles are designed specifically to make snap shots instead of trapping and shooting. In recent years, Zen Studios’ design mandate seems to be that ball control is the absolute worst thing a designer can allow. It’s frustrating as all hell, but in the case of Wrath of the Elder Gods, at least the table makes sense to be anti-ball control.
Signature Shot – Strange Structure: Doesn’t this look like a fun front-and-center target along the lines of something you would expect from Brian Eddy? This COULD have been an all-time great toy target, but it’s too conservative in its design. There’s little to no feedback when you hit it. A moan. A weird chant in an alien language. Something. ANYTHING. Occasionally, it opens up, but even hitting it doesn’t do anything. The eye creepily follows the ball, and that’s fine, but it’s not enough. This table needed its own version of Raul Julia’s callouts from Addams Family. It should have been wickedly over the top. For what it’s worth, the u-turn surrounding the Strange Structure is fine. I like u-turns in pinball. Always fun to shoot.
The biggest problem with Wrath of the Elder Gods is that it wants to both be a multiball-heavy table while also making multiball as difficult to enjoy as humanly possible. In the wizard mode, balls fly onto the playfield at the speed of light, and there’s just so many balls that you can’t possibly hope to juggle them since the auto plunge is tailored specifically to interfere with shooting. The balls are likely to bounce back in the direction they came too, making shots on the left side of the table especially difficult. Five balls total, on a table that runs fast and has fairly dangerous outlanes. Oh, and what lane is one of two lit during the first part of this insane five-ball multiball? The one that the balls are auto-plunged onto, on the left side, which of course prevents the shot from being made if you’re not in complete control of all five balls at once. God, I really hope the giggles Gary had in Zen’s offices when he came up with that outright trollish crap was worth it. I’m sure the excuse was this would come across as chaotic madness in line with the Lovecraft theme. Instead, it’s the total opposite, because when you can’t get a shot off in pinball, the table becomes really boring. Wrath of the Elder God’s wizard mode is basically like a five year old child trying to shoot a basketball, only to have Shaquille O’Neal slap down every attempt and then taunt the child to “git gud.” Well, at least while the ball save is lit. Oddly enough, the best strategy is just flick away while ball save is going, but then settle it down to a two-ball multiball after the protection fades. I should note that Angela LOVES this style of multiball. She’s adopted, in case you couldn’t tell.
Thanks everyone for reading the Pinball M feature here at Indie Gamer Chick or The Pinball Chick. Whichever you’re using!
Wrath of the Elder Gods has the theme, layout and modes to be an all-timer. It’s the mechanics that ruin all the fun. The slingshots are SO violent. The kickbacks are SO violent. The auto-plunge is SO violent. Anytime the table itself takes over the ball movement, the fun stops and the recovery process begins. The end result is a table that’s both fun and a trash fire. Despite what Angela insists, there’s too much defense on Wrath thanks to the fast speed, violent slingshots, and bouncy rails. Balls are so drawn to that area around the left flipper’s lane rails that you’d swear there’s a vortex there from another dimension. I guess I can’t rule out that’s actually the case with this table, but the table isn’t better for it. I’d also like to note that any goodwill this table built up by being the freebie of Pinball M is burned away as long as the paid version on Pinball FX is unplayable. It literally just drops the ball right between the flippers. This does NOT happen on Pinball M’s free to play version. This is weird, Zen! You know, it’s been almost 600 days since Sky Pirates came out and it still hasn’t been patched. Do you really think fans are still angry over Pinball Pass or not getting legacy tables they already paid for once for free on the new platform? Maybe the anger is more about the feeling that you’re giving us a giant middle finger with the lack of urgency to fix stuff people already paid for, or the overall direction your original pins have taken. You recently re-released Super League Football, and it got everyone excited. Maybe it’s because that table comes from an era where your designers weren’t obsessed with trolling players and just wanted to make fun shooting tables. You need to call a meeting of your designers and remind them that you’re making pinball, not Dark Souls.
Cathy: GOOD
Angela: GREAT
Oscar: GOOD
Sasha: GOOD
Elias: BAD* (Nintendo Switch)
Primary Scoring Average: 3.25 🧹CLEAN SCORECARD🧹
*Nintendo Switch Scores not factored into average. This will be updated at a later time.
#3: Williams Pinball Volume 2
#5: Williams Pinball Volume 4
#6 Williams Pinball Volume 3
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