Nolan
New member
- Jan 19, 2014
- 120
- 0
Lets vent.
I dig the vast majority of the tables I've played in Pinball Arcade. Of the remainder I feel mostly apathy, but a scant few just rile me the hell up. Mostly because I really want to like them.
Champions Pub first and foremost. I love boxing, I love pinball, I love history, I love that music, I love that specific turn of the century period, but I friggen loathe outlanes. Especially outlanes with the pull of a super massive black hole. Normally I would just write the table off, and pretend it doesnt exist, but the rest of the motif is so damn up my alley that I cant resist driving myself crazy.
My game almost always is lost to the right outlane, and almost always during a fight. Any time I hit a slingshot, I almost always careen into an outlane. I just dont see how that end result can be avoided.
Star Trek the Next Generation. Again, another table that, for the most part, I love. I am a pretty big TNG nerd, my favorite of all the Treks. It has fantastic voice overs, great music, and some awesome shots and toys... but again, it seems 9 of 10 balls are lost to outlanes
I see all of these enormous scores, and I wonder how the hell you guys manage to avoid my fate. I am pretty good at pinball, and pretty good at TPA, but the skills to achieve highscores on these games with any kind of consistency completely avoids me. To me, that is the biggest problem, it makes them feel more like games of chance, than of skill. Which is partially true of all tables, there is always the element of chance, but it seems far more prevalent on those 2 tables.
Honorable mention to Tee'd Off, which has some of the blandest voice overs, in both acting and writing, and feels infinitely inferior to No Good Gofers in almost every regard. The table is easily avoided however, but I wonder why it was ever emulated to begin with.
I dig the vast majority of the tables I've played in Pinball Arcade. Of the remainder I feel mostly apathy, but a scant few just rile me the hell up. Mostly because I really want to like them.
Champions Pub first and foremost. I love boxing, I love pinball, I love history, I love that music, I love that specific turn of the century period, but I friggen loathe outlanes. Especially outlanes with the pull of a super massive black hole. Normally I would just write the table off, and pretend it doesnt exist, but the rest of the motif is so damn up my alley that I cant resist driving myself crazy.
My game almost always is lost to the right outlane, and almost always during a fight. Any time I hit a slingshot, I almost always careen into an outlane. I just dont see how that end result can be avoided.
Star Trek the Next Generation. Again, another table that, for the most part, I love. I am a pretty big TNG nerd, my favorite of all the Treks. It has fantastic voice overs, great music, and some awesome shots and toys... but again, it seems 9 of 10 balls are lost to outlanes
I see all of these enormous scores, and I wonder how the hell you guys manage to avoid my fate. I am pretty good at pinball, and pretty good at TPA, but the skills to achieve highscores on these games with any kind of consistency completely avoids me. To me, that is the biggest problem, it makes them feel more like games of chance, than of skill. Which is partially true of all tables, there is always the element of chance, but it seems far more prevalent on those 2 tables.
Honorable mention to Tee'd Off, which has some of the blandest voice overs, in both acting and writing, and feels infinitely inferior to No Good Gofers in almost every regard. The table is easily avoided however, but I wonder why it was ever emulated to begin with.
At a respectable distance I would say that Class of 1812 and Champion Pub are no favorites but I reckon more playing time with them could change my mind. As far as the EM tables go: I was never into them, being of the DMD-style generation when I played real tables, but TPA brought a new appreciation for me. I do like the precise shot-making that they ask of the player (Big Shot, Eldorado), and the typical flow they bring. I really have a love-hate thing for Big Shot where a lot of frustration pays off hugely when you do get success. Every shot there is buttcheekclenching, almost no safe shot possible and that is in a way the charm of that one ("Losing is Fun" anyone?). But it's an acquired taste I think. I sucked at STTNG too in the beginning but the strategy of going solely for the lock and playing Borg Multiball has paid off, as was learning how to nudge pre-emptively when balls go toward the outlanes. Rescueing them when they are already behind the slingshots is nigh impossible. I actually tend to dislike this kind of strategy where you solely focus on one thing because I love playing all modes on a table, but when hunting for HOF points or a particular highscore, it's the way to go. I did a comparison a while back between the TPA version and a real one, go check it out if you like: 
