Fish Tales - First Impression

[Heretic]

**** hof its inaccurate abyways from alpha beta to release and revision

play ball *****es

 

[Chris Dunman]

Brilliant table. Great work from FS here. Along with others here, if this is what's to come in 2014, I can't wait. Season 3 pro pass bought.

 

[netizen]

**** hof its inaccurate abyways from alpha beta to release and revision

play ball *****es

Bingo. The HOF values are continually be re-calculated as the tables get played more it seems.

 

[Fungi]

The thing about the HOF point tho'. Everybody is on the same scale. If I can only get what amount to 28 pts. Same with the other guy. If someone else gets 56 pts., well that just means s/he did better than me.

Or is this about completionists being OCD about getting 1000 pts. on every table?

 

[DanBradford]

for me, it's mostly about trying to be as good as i can be, on a reasonable scale for all tables. i'm inside the top all time 1000 scorers on White Water, yet i only got less than 100 points. same with Champion Pub, Whirlwind, 1812, CBW, ElDorado, Dr Dude and now also Fish tales. whereas i have 582 points on TOTAN and 336 on AFM, yet on both tables i'm outside the top 1500 scorers. it's not weighted properly: even the numptiest muppet cold score 100 HOF points on the first 20 or so tables, but nowadays they swung it too far the other way.

all it means is that i'm unlikely to make much difference to my total HOF score or position by even doubling my best ever score on many recent tables. so if i wanna be a points whore i will hafta go back to those early tables and try harder. which makes the weighting even more imbalanced, as soon even an epic 800 point score will be outside the top bracket. not much point in having HOF points for a table like Cactus Canyon, as my 25 points for 102M is just too mean i think.

i'd like it if the points were a true reflection of the table position. so if you're in the top places you get more points, and so the more popular and most played tables should be harder to get loads of HOF points on. i'd love what netizen said to be true, that they're resetting the points goals, but the only table i know for sure they've done this on is Victory, and only because i keep a nerdy record.

 

[Eegah]

Yeah if they were constantly rebalancing I'm sure I'd have more than like 7 points on Carcass -- er, Cactus Canyon. HoF is just versus what some dude hard-coded into the backend and even leaderboards don't necessarily mean much -- I'm #205 on Fish Tails, but out of how many?

I really like how Farsight does the tournament scoring, where your score is proportional to how you do relative to the rest of the field, with a cool meta-score adding up your points across the tables. The high points for the top 3 scores gives a good impetus to not just settle for #7 or whatever either. I'd like it if the regular leaderboards did that, and frankly I think a lot of games would benefit from it, not just TPA.

 

[Matt McIrvin]

I have very little real-life experience with this table (though my daughter had an epic ball on it once at the Chunky's in Haverhill), and can't really judge how well the TPA version captures it.

That said, this is a really fun, addictive pinball in TPA, rapidly becoming one of my favorites. It's pretty hard and fast-draining if you don't watch out. It's funny how recognizable the styles of certain pinball designers are; in this case, the symmetrical crossover ramps are a signature of Mark Ritchie, the designer of Taxi (though they're different in detail from Taxi's).

 

[Pinballwiz45b]

960 million on Fish Tales...that game is BRUTAL!

 

[xAzatothx]

nice back handing of the lock there PW

 

[Man-Machine]

Addictive is the word. I actually have nothing to add to the analysis in this thread. Of course only time will tell if this is merely a great table like, say, T2 or a true classic like TZ or MM.
The difficulty in hitting targets that was mentioned in an earlier post might be because of the shorter flippers.

 

[oqvist]

I dislike it. Drains 9x out of 10 if there is any chance on the outlanes and the all important lock ramp is entirely off camber. Oddly enough it played better when I was a total noob and had no idea what I was doing. I am a bit disappointed by the theme it´s not as fun catching fish as I thought it would be.

 

[foxystyle]

I played the real Fish Tales and I remember the table was hard. The Pinball Arcade version is just like the real machine. Fish Tales requires more skill but you also need some luck. The captive ball is hard to hit, there's plenty of good things to collect so it shouldn't be easy.

 

[pin pin]

It's too hard, at least on ios. STNNG was difficult to tame, but at least after consistent practice and you would improve. My second or 3rd game is still my highest score even after hours of practice. The flippers don't feel as accurate as they could be. Notice how there's no tactics and strategies thread yet? If I were to start one it would read "Try your ass off not to drain and be prepared to fail. Often."

 

[ChezRoxwell]

Meh, I think this is the last table I buy. This table really demonstrated just how shoddy the ball physics are. I'm on the PS4 so maybe it's different but balls going from 90 mph to a stand still, insane bounces, and just the general lack of control that real tables have. I know this is a "video game" but if they want to emulate the tables they should emulate real life physics a bit better. I mean, just watch a real life table play of this game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRhZagXyw-w and then play TPA version with a billion mph ball careening all over the board.

 

[Zorgwon]

On my droid ball physics are good, I think. Maybe even too easy
. Those center ramps seem to work without skill.

I like the theme and how it is implemented but I don't think that I will come back often. The lightning flippers spoil it.

 

[DokkenRokken]

We have one at a local arcade, and I'll say this much- This version is a lot easier to play! lol

They actually did a really good job, I don't think there's anything I'd change...besides the insane difficulty of that "Fast Cast" shot!

 

[Ronwell_Pudding]

Yes, this game seems like it was designed by a group who was having marital problems and they just quit smoking. A one play and walk away table. The more I play it the more I hate it. No wonder I see these for sale frequently and for much less than other DMD tables. It's just not a fun table. Plus, having to hear a bunch of hicks constantly calling out in that moronic southern drawl doesn't help.

 

[WhiteChocolate]

i found with 'fish' (along with 'tales of arabian' and 'no good', possibly others) has such strong bumper-kicks (the ones above the flippers), you can watch a ball go from a very soft glancing hit, then get kicked across to the other, which kicks it back at an accelerating rate upwards-angle, back'n'forth till eventually you see it drain out -over- the bumpers l/r sides... trying to learn to avoid that by nudging the ball out of its impending 'bounce apocolypse!' there's other kinds of bounce-feedback there and other places that are best pre-emptively nudged out of, though it's tough to get a handle on it ('carnegie hall?' practice, practice, practice! probably a helpful thing to learn for many other tables too...

p.s. - that nudging is really forgiving on 'fish' and most other tpa tables helps! if you don't do much yet and get bleah scores, get into doing it more! tough to catch those fast shots, but when you've got a steep trajectory, try to nudge the ball up near the top of its arc to get some maximum delta-change, partner. ;0 'ridley got any beamans?'

only other thing i've learned is points really only rack up best if i shoot those middle l/r ramps, the 'boat' ramps, in the alternating order it wants you to - all other shots seem only to put 'icing on the cake' for those, so get used to hitting them (keep shooting up 'monster fish' if you can).