FarSight launches new Pinball title

[HardcorePinballGamer4Life]

It's Official: PlayStation 3 Version is Back On!

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2012/04/05/the-pinball-arcade-hits-ps3-and-ps-vita-on-april-10th/

It seems like my guess was correct; the bug is squashed!

Hopefully this means the Xbox 360 version will get patched around this date.

[bclewis]

I downloaded and played a few games of TPA last night, with mostly favourable impressions.

So far, I've enjoyed Arabian Nights and Black Hole the most. I love the dark atmosphere on Black Hole. The draining from inner playfield when gate is still closed caught me off guard at first (and I'm still not sure what exactly you need to hit to open the gate), but I'm starting to warm to it. Basically, until you open the gate, an inner playfield drain is a "real drain".

I think there is some truth to some of the complaints about the physics, but overall I have the impression that TPA is closer to the real thing than Zen in this regard (although Zen's often has more realistic visual appearance when it comes to reflections and appearance of rolling etc.)

There's no question to me that TPA is well worth the price for pinball fans, but I hope for some tweaks in the future (agree especially with complaints about the UI and plunger camera angle). I'm definitely looking forward to more tables (Taxi! Taxi!).

[Verjigorm]

The draining from inner playfield when gate is still closed caught me off guard at first (and I'm still not sure what exactly you need to hit to open the gate), but I'm starting to warm to it. Basically, until you open the gate, an inner playfield drain is a "real drain".

If I understood the instructions correctly, there are 2 (3?) ways to open the gate.
On the lower right side of the normal field, there are 4 lit yellow targets. If you hit all four a green arrow appear and signals that a ball through the right inlane opens that gate.

On the lower playfield you have drop down targets on the left and on the right. Dropping these should open the gate as well, but I'm not sure, if you need all on both sides or just all on one side.

[Corpsesmith]

Finally got to try and buy today and feel it's very, very... ok. There are somethings I like a lot, the extras in the form of the history of the tables. I don't even mind the front end, its good to see the whole table displayed (tho once a few start to arrive I can imagine this being a real PITA to navigate.

I do find the ball incredibly light (maybe its because Zen's pinball is too heavy, but I don't remember feeling it felt to heavy when I first started with it) as the ball feels light it seems to fly around the table. I too have launched a ball see it fly from a bumper straight out down an out lane without going near any flippers a couple of times on Ripley and the wobbly trapped ball makes me think that collision detection is a bit off.

Graphically the game looks fine, but I've experienced a slight pause in the game when changing view and where is the environmentally reflective ball we were promised?
I also think that Farsight have missed a couple of tricks in table views. We have these great looking recreations and we can't see them. I have had a real difficulty finding a view that works and the lack of a free view is big downer. And losing sight of the table when pulling the plunger makes skillshots v difficult on Arabian Nights.

Finally I wish Farsight had done something with the table environment. One thing I love about PBFX is that the environment the table is in reflects the table. TPA felt like I was playing in a dingy cellar. On my own.

To conclude I'm glad I bought the tables, but I'm also glad I read a few comments here first in preparation, had I not done so I would have been sorely disappointed as it was it just confirmed the criticisms I've been reading here.

[Dalek Nation]

If I understood the instructions correctly, there are 2 (3?) ways to open the gate.
On the lower right side of the normal field, there are 4 lit yellow targets. If you hit all four a green arrow appear and signals that a ball through the right inlane opens that gate.

On the lower playfield you have drop down targets on the left and on the right. Dropping these should open the gate as well, but I'm not sure, if you need all on both sides or just all on one side.

You don't need to drop both sets of targets. When on lower playfield I am always trying for the middle drop targets or the right orbital. As soon as it says Gate Open, I just let it drain. If it says "Open" and you hit ANY of the targets it will close again.

In case anyone is having trouble with any of the challenges (like having your ball survive reentry) the challenges page BEFORE YOU START THE TABLE will have an option to hit "A" for each challenge and it explains pretty conscisely how to do each.

[Dalek Nation]

.....also think that Farsight have missed a couple of tricks in table views. We have these great looking recreations and we can't see them. I have had a real difficulty finding a view that works and the lack of a free view is big downer. And losing sight of the table when pulling the plunger makes skillshots v difficult on Arabian Nights.

This is the biggest drawback in my opinion. I just can't understand why Farsight didn't give us some way of viewing the entire playfield. If it would be too tricky to allow us to freeze the action and peer around on the fly all Zen style, fine. But to not give us ANY option to look the tables over is a let-down.

Arabian Nights skillshot isn't hard once you get it down. There is no way to pull the plunger soft enough to get it to roll up the ramp and come back, so if you just barely pull, pause, let go, it will almost always hit the closest hole; pulling plunger all the way, pause, then release will almost always be in the furthest and putting the plunger in the middle and pausing almost always hits middle. Just pause in these spots and you'll liklely hit skillshot every time. Genie's ramp is then the next step for super-skillshot.

[MultiForce]

I'm pretty happy with it so far. Used 30-45 minutes to get 6,567.329,400 (just so Lukky can see what he needs) on theater of magic and that's something I can live with. I kinda feel that I don't have to waste an hour just to see if I have a chance of getting a new high score, like some of the Zen tables.

Looks and feels okay but it takes time to get used to the bouncy little bastards. Multiball is hell on earth compared to Zen tables


I'm happy we got this so we have some choice.

[Corpsesmith]

This is the biggest drawback in my opinion. I just can't understand why Farsight didn't give us some way of viewing the entire playfield. If it would be too tricky to allow us to freeze the action and peer around on the fly all Zen style, fine. But to not give us ANY option to look the tables over is a let-down.

Arabian Nights skillshot isn't hard once you get it down. There is no way to pull the plunger soft enough to get it to roll up the ramp and come back, so if you just barely pull, pause, let go, it will almost always hit the closest hole; pulling plunger all the way, pause, then release will almost always be in the furthest and putting the plunger in the middle and pausing almost always hits middle. Just pause in these spots and you'll liklely hit skillshot every time. Genie's ramp is then the next step for super-skillshot.

Smashing, thanks for the info on the skill shot. Still a shame I can't actually see the punger retracting or some form of gauge.

[Dalek Nation]

Black Hole:
To get the standard achievement you have to get the special from the roll-under at the top.
In the standard goals description it tells you how to get this roll-under to be the special, the step before special is extra ball.
If you never advance it to special, it seems like you can just keep getting this extra ball. As anyone on my friend's list can tell you I don't score very high, but my 1.19M from milking this extra ball sets me @ 78 in leaderboard (I know its a young leader, but this is way higher than any other one I'm in).

[Pinmon]

Obviously, that guy is very good but unless the scoring is different on Pinball Arcade or I missed something, he only scored around a billion in that game. I put up almost 2 billion in my first game of Theatre of Magic on PA which ranks me not even in the top 100. So a 10 minute game certainly doesn't seem good enough to net you anywhere near a top spot on the leader boards.

DutchTommy's game (where the scoring glitch occurred) lasted 10 minutes and he scored more than 10 Billions. If you seen him on the PFX2 leaderboards he's definitely one of the top players.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QR_cb4wTiZU

I doubt even with more practice and experience better players will last for more than 30 minutes but only time will tell of course so we'll see.

[Verjigorm]

DutchTommy's game (where the scoring glitch occurred) lasted 10 minutes and he scored more than 10 Billions. If you seen him on the PFX2 leaderboards he's definitely one of the top players.
I doubt even with more practice and experience better players will last for more than 30 minutes but only time will tell of course so we'll see.

I think it takes a bit longer. The video is 11 min and at the beginning of the recording he already scored around 6 Billion. So the game itself is probably more around 30 minutes.

My longest lasted around 15-20 minutes.

[Womble]

The more I play, the more I enjoy TOM and TOTAN as tables.

However, the more I play, the more I'm dissatisfied with what FarSight have done on the 360 version.

This really is a rush job, to go with the rush jobs on Android, iOS and the Mac.

The UI is just rubbish for a modern title. The high score system is half-arsed.

The graphics pale in comparison to Zen's offerings. The attention to detail simply isn't there. Badly designed, overblown, high-contrast lighting means you can barely read some of the table notices. Low polygon counts means that the table elements look rough. Low quality textures are everywhere.

And then there's the (supposed) PS3 version. No great thing in itself by Zen's standards, but far still superior to the 360 version:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/playstationblog/7046003393/

The games are great. How could they not be? But the implementations are not.

BIG SIGH.

If only Zen had managed to secure these licences. They'd have been able to give them the care they deserve.

[Womble]

Also, the leader boards must be broken, because cracker has the top score on TOTAN from all my Friends.

[Pinmon]

I think it takes a bit longer. The video is 11 min and at the beginning of the recording he already scored around 6 Billion. So the game itself is probably more around 30 minutes.

My longest lasted around 15-20 minutes.

Gah. You're right, I had not noticed the recording begun at 6B. So probably 25-30minutes. Still, a long shot from Paranormal/X-Men/Ms 'Splosion and co. almost indefinite games.

[Pinmon]

One small thing I dislike, although relatively minor is the dmd in TPA. Or rather the fact that it doesn't look dot-matrix at all. Instead it seems it's been "squashed".