Bethesda Pinball by Zen

[HotHamBoy]

Uh, that would be nice. RPG elements confirmed for one of the tables or just one of your crazy good ideas?

...craft weapons, wield magic, equip armor, buy and sell goods, mine materials, find companions and complete side quests before defeating Alduin and fulfilling your destiny as the Dragonborn on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Pinball table.

It's an assumption based on this description in the press release. Fingers crossed!

 

[Sun Vulcan]

Achievements updated on Steam!

Creature Hunter
Defeat a boss enemy on the Fallout® Pinball. (Single player only)

The Wanderer
Reach level five on the Fallout® Pinball table. (Single player only)

Dragonslayer
Defeat a dragon on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim® Pinball table! (Single player only)

Dragonborn
Complete the main quests on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim® Pinball table! (Single player only)

Big Gun
Blast away your enemies with the BFG on DOOM® Pinball. (Single player only)

Hell Walker
Face and defeat the Cyberdemon on Nightmare difficulty on DOOM® Pinball. (Single player only)

 

[wolfson]

just played the 3 tables ,loving them.nice visuals !!!

 

[zmcvay]

I had Doom for the 32x add on for the Sega Genesis. I recall liking it at the time, but it was a long time ago. Over 20 years or so.
Never even heard of Elderscrolls before this thread. I guess I'm a bit out of the loop. I'm getting old boys.

Elder Scrolls is almost as old as DOOM (TES: Arena came out in 1994, DOOM in 1993), but didn't really hit the mainstream until later installments. Most would probably see the breakout as the third game, Morrowind (2002) as that was the first console release for the main series. Great games, but a bit of a timesink. I have over 400 hours on Skyrim, and I don't even want to know how much time I spent playing Morrowind. I'm enjoying the pinball version of it so far, it seems like a more serious take on Zen's Epic Quest, which is one of my favorite tables from them. I like that this is the first pinball I've had to create a character for before playing.

 

[Jeff Strong]

The Elder Scrolls: Arena blew my mind when it first came out. It would barely run on my 386 (same with DOOM). Sometimes if you cast a spell it would crash with an "out of memory" error, so I stuck with warriors and thieves for that reason . The frame rate was also awful (basically a slide show), but that didn't stop me from playing. The randomly generated quests and dungeons were so enthralling to me, and something I missed in the later games (Oblivion especially). The world just seemed so huge and unpredictable. I could play for hours and not get the least bit bored. Good times.

 

[Heretic]

aye jeffery good times man

 

[Jeff Strong]

I remember our mouse died right before we got the game. Back then, stores like Wal-mart, Target, and such didn't even bother to carry PC accessories, and actual PC stores had very limited inventory, so we had to special order a new one and couldn't even play the new game for a few weeks, which was a cruel sort of nerd torture. So I studied and poured over the game manual like a student studying for a big exam. As hairy can attest to, back then, game manuals were like novels, sometimes even thicker. Very much a lost art. But alas, it was a truly happy day in the Strong household when my brother and I were finally able to play. The hard part was getting him to actually share the PC since I was the younger brother and he had couple years of muscle on me. I still have a scar or two from our spats over such things.

Sorry to ramble off topic. Just some fond Elder Scrolls memories. I'll have to give this Skyrim table a whirl and slay some rats!

 

[Xanija]

Having played the Skyrim table quite excessively today, I can say it's a really nice way of transferring the RPG to a pinball table. I like it very much to be able to keep a character from game to game. Also, the quest progression will be stored with the character. There sure will be players to achieve to complete the main quest in one game, but that will be the minority.

There just one thing that really bugs me to no end: To be able to buy, sell and craft stuff, you need to find a town. I find the shots to get the "Explore" shot active very difficult. Since you need to get 3-5 explorations, I have not managed to get to a town even once, but I have been able to finish the main quest. Since the explorations are not stored (the progress), you start again from scratch every time you start a new game. Maybe I will get some more practice, but at the moment I feel it's more complicated to beat such a basic game mechanic than necessary.

 

[EldarOfSuburbia]

I've given in. I've bought them. Just finish downloading already!!

 

[psykil]

Skyrim is like Epic Quest on crack. I'm liking it a lot, which is a bit of a surprise as I'm not really into high-fantasy style RPGs. The inventory interface is kinda clunky.

Doom is also really fun. I'm just getting into it and it seems like there's lots to do. The wheel for choosing guns is brilliant.

Fallout has an interesting mechanic choosing your stats at the start but the table itself hasn't really grabbed me the way the other two do. It seems a bit boring. Maybe that will change when I get deeper into it.

All in all worth the money.

 

[Xanija]

There just one thing that really bugs me to no end: To be able to buy, sell and craft stuff, you need to find a town. I find the shots to get the "Explore" shot active very difficult. Since you need to get 3-5 explorations, I have not managed to get to a town even once, but I have been able to finish the main quest. Since the explorations are not stored (the progress), you start again from scratch every time you start a new game. Maybe I will get some more practice, but at the moment I feel it's more complicated to beat such a basic game mechanic than necessary.

I have raised this concern on the Steam forum, and the table designer has confirmed this is to difficult and he will make a hotfix to store the progress between games. This will be a massive improvement!

I've given in. I've bought them. Just finish downloading already!!

Cool! I hope you'll enjoy them!

 

[HotHamBoy]

I'm waiting for the iOS release but I played the demos on PS4 (absurdly short lol) and I'm really impressed by what I've seen. The graphics are much better than I anticipated and the gameplay seems very deep and the tables themselves have some very interesting design elements.

Very happy that they finally expanded on the Epic Quest concept, perfect license for it!

 

[ScotchYeti]

True, and mixing RPG elements with pinball mechanism has its appeal. I think they overdid it with the inventory management, or what's the point of it?

I was actually ready to buy the tables on day 1 but grabbed the Aliens pack instead...

 

[Silverball67]

Bought the tables yesterday. And I must say, I´m very pleased with them, expecially DOOM is absolutely great. Amazing artwork, outstanding sound and the tables have the right flow. That keeps me standing the time I´ve got to wait, until SPA will be released in Europe. By the way, we still don´t get any information, when this will be.

 

[EldarOfSuburbia]

So far I've played Skyrim, and not Fallout or Doom. I suppose I will dive into Fallout tonight.

Okay, first off, it's very pretty, but I just get the feeling Zen would love me to be playing with a moving camera instead of the 1w static camera in portrait mode. It all runs very smoothly in 4K DSR sampled down to 1080x1920 though, rock-solid 60fps. Though DSR does mess with the table UI somewhat.

My overall impression of the game is... repetitive, and frustrating.

Repetitive because every mode or quest is pretty much some variation of "shoot the flashing shots, then kill the bad guy" (often multiple times).

Frustrating because the main story quests have to be restarted from the beginning if you fail them, but at least the ability to save progress from game to game makes it less annoying.

As for the constant interruptions to switch weapons (run out of arrows!), or level up, or open chests... geez, you think a grace period when un-pausing might be nice? It may be a Zen thing that I as a total newbie need to get used to, but it ain't fun having the game decide to stop and throw you into a dialog when you know the ball is headed toward a flipper.

I'm also wondering what the heck the point of collecting all that stuff is. I can't do anything with it. I can't sell it; I've yet to play long enough to come across a town where I can sell it! (Contrary to Skyrim itself, where if you're following the "expected" path through the main quest, you come across a village and a major city very early on.)

Then there's the audio on one of the quests, which grated me no end. Wouldn't annoy someone not familiar with Skyrim, but I replayed this same quest enough times to be shouting at the screen.

Three quotes in particular:
"The High Hrothgar" - no, it's just "High Hrothgar", no "The". Aargh.
"... your shouts or Thu'um..." - no, the correct translation of "Thu'um" is "Voice" (though as with all such things in the Dragon tongue, there's much more nuance to the notion of "Thu'um" than can be conveyed simply by the word "Voice").
"... learn your new Thu'um ..." - no, "Thu'um" or "Voice" is the ability to Shout words of power in the Dragon tongue; and collectively the words of power are referred to as "Shouts", so it should be "... learn your new Shouts ..." or "... learn your new Words of Power ...".

Yes I'm a fanboy and unashamedly so

 

[Xanija]

True, and mixing RPG elements with pinball mechanism has its appeal. I think they overdid it with the inventory management, or what's the point of it?

Well, if you ever played Skyrim, inventory is a huge thing in this game.

Crafting, buying, selling stuff - I think it's cool they put this into the game. Even with day- and nightcycles (shops are closed during the night).

 

[Xanija]

I'm also wondering what the heck the point of collecting all that stuff is. I can't do anything with it. I can't sell it; I've yet to play long enough to come across a town where I can sell it! (Contrary to Skyrim itself, where if you're following the "expected" path through the main quest, you come across a village and a major city very early on.)

This will be changed in the next hotfix. You will come across towns more often, as the progress to move to towns is taken over from game to game. Then you can sell, buy and craft with this stuff. Then there's only housing missing, where you can drop all of your valuable loot

Still I think the shots you need to make in order to reach a city are a bit too difficult. But that's something I can live with.

 

[EldarOfSuburbia]

This will be changed in the next hotfix. You will come across towns more often, as the progress to move to towns is taken over from game to game. Then you can sell, buy and craft with this stuff. Then there's only housing missing, where you can drop all of your valuable loot

Still I think the shots you need to make in order to reach a city are a bit too difficult. But that's something I can live with.

It would be good if they tied a couple of early towns into the main quest progression.

So for instance after the first main quest (Unbound), you get access to Riverwood (the village) where you can get a basic idea of what you can do in a town/village.

Then after Bleak Falls Barrow you unlock access to Whiterun, a major city, which gives you more options.

That sort of thing.

 

[EldarOfSuburbia]

I got to playing Fallout and Doom last night.

Fallout has the same main flaw as Skyrim: all the modes are the same. Make shots, kill the bad guy, collect the loot. Of the three, it also has the shortest ball times and is prone to house balls, the most egregious being when you make the last shot in a mode, an enemy pops up in the path of the ball, and the ball spins away down an outlane. Actually, no, wait, the most egregious is when you start a Vault mode, the ball gets spit out onto the spinner, and shoots off STDM or into an outlane. Please at the very least patch that to activate the ball saver. These aren't isolated incidents; I could pretty much count on getting one such drain per game. The narration is dry, and there's zero exposition on over who the major factions are, or who your companions are (and your companions don't do much except give a minor perk). Fanboys like me will get everything, but if you've never played Fallout 4, you're probably going to be wondering what the point of everything is. Worst thing? The soundtrack. It's a generic classical soundtrack, unlike Fallout 4 where you can choose to listen to a radio station that pumps out pop/easy listening standards from the 50s and 60s. That's sorely missing and to my mind helps add to the atmosphere of the game.

Doom is fun! It also tends to have long ball times, but that's not a bad thing. Easily the best thing about Doom is that it takes advantage of being virtual pinball. Warping balls, Arkanoid-style mini-games, light trails, weapons zapping about, and so on. The modes are more interesting, heck, there are multiball modes you can play right off the bat if you want. Plus the callouts are great. Of the three, this might be the one I end up playing the most.

 

[Jamman39]

DOOM might be my new favorite table by Zen. I had no idea how badly FX2 needed a game with a heavy metal soundtrack. It incorporates the cool pop up figures, and modes that continue between balls that some of the (lesser quality) Star Wars tables introduced, and combines them with a great flow, simple rule set, and did I mention that music? It actually feels like the new Doom game, in a lot of ways.

Skyrim also feels like playing Skyrim. The slow, considered pace and sudden buildup of tension when a dragon appears really reminded me of the time I spent with it on the PS3 before technical issues got in the way. Epic Quest was always a concept I liked, but the tone didn't work for me, so Skyrim taking that concept and expanding on it was really welcome. Skyrim always was the most epic quest in video games anyway.

I haven't played much Fallout, and I've never played the game it's based on, so I don't feel strongly enough about it to take time away from DOOM or Skyrim