South Park: Butters’ Very Own Pinball Game (Pinball FX Table Review)

October 21, 2023 by Leave a comment

South Park: Butters Very Own Pinball Game
Platform: Pinball FX
Set: South Park Pinball ($9.99)
Included in Pinball Pass
Designed by Szucs “ndever” David
Originally Released October 14, 2014

This is a reminder that Butters made multiple earnest attempts at destroying the world, by drowning everyone and by destroying the o-zone layer. Oh sure, it was adorable how ill-conceived and childlike his attempts were, but they were good faith efforts at human extermination. He’s not THAT wholesome.

It’s probably best that pinball fans look at the Butters table as a throw-in bonus for South Park: Super-Sweet Pinball, where $10 nets you one really well done PG-rated South Park pin and one middle-of-the-road, mundane and average pin. Which isn’t to say that you should ignore Butters’ Very Own Pinball Game. I really did think it was completely decent. It’s just impossible to build-up any momentum thanks to Zen’s typically violent slingshots and over-indulgent modes. In this case, I think the slings are easily the worst part. Seriously, holy crap, those slingshots should be in a holding cell, staring at a clock as it inches closer to midnight with a priest reading them their last rites while a pair of three-drug cocktails, a gurney, and IVs await in the next room over. They’re silverball serial killers that, all by themselves, drop Butters from maybe as high as a GREAT table to barely GOOD. Well, actually the horrendous mini-field with physics so weirdly inconsistent that it’s practically broken doesn’t help, either.

Oof. Terrible.

While they don’t look the part, the flippers for the Professor Chaos mini-table feel nubby. The physics for the mode are completely different than a normal table. The Vices all agree that the slope feels non-standard, but we disagree as to whether it’s too shallow or too steep. It kind of feels like it alternates between both, depending on where the ball is. Regardless of whether it’s too steep or shallow, flips on the mini-field have this weird shuffle-pass sensation. It’s as if you’re playing pinball with an air hockey puck that has fluctuating weight. As if that’s not bad enough, the four targets are boring AND that you have to shoot them twice each. Combine that with the fact that there’s no ball save, and thus rounds of this catastrophe could end in literally a second or two, and it quickly became my least favorite of the table’s modes. This might be the worst mini-field Zen has ever done. It really put a damper on the whole Butters experience, because I really don’t think their physics have ever been worse.

You absolutely MUST play the ball out of the saucer or risk a quick drain. While it’s not a 100% certainty, the drop from the saucer hangs right over the drain. If you’re not attempting to shoot the cellar or spin disc, what you can do safely is hold the bat flipper out, which should give you a gentle drop down to the primary flippers to gain control of the ball.

The rest of Butters is all about basic, nearly bare-bones light-shooting. Modes are started by putting the ball in the saucer in the center of the playfield, then converting the follow-up shot with the bat flipper into the spin disk. The disk is surrounded by several targets, and by total chance, you have to score 50 hits on the targets. It sounds like a lot, but you shouldn’t need more than two successful shots in the spin disc. Between the three members of my family, ONE TIME in an entire week of playing this table did one of us need three shots, whereas completing all 50 in a single shot wasn’t rare at all. In extremely rare cases, the ball gets launched out of the spin disk, though it should be playable even if this happens. After lighting the mode start, you’re given five options. The worst is Chaos vs Coon & Friends, which is entirely the mini-table I whined about above. By far the easiest mode is Marjorine, and the scoring is completely screwed-up on this one. You only need to complete three shots and return the ball to the mode start VUK. Each of the first three shots gives you two options. Besides the third shot, all four of the shots score in the millions of points. It’s a cinch.

I’ve heard of shooting bricks, but this is ridiculous.

Last of the Meheecans is indicative of everything Zen Studios does wrong pinball modes. The previous mode I talked about was four shots, all simple angles, and only one of which is an optional high-risk shot. This one is seven shots, all of them with much higher difficulty, all of them much more risky, and all but one of them score much less points. In this mode, you have to shoot five orbits, but the entrances to those orbits have rising-and-lowering walls. Once you clear four of the five orbits, the final one must be shot three times, and it’s only now you’re putting up million point scores. And you’re on a timer, on a table with long return times. Because hitting each shot once just plain wasn’t enough, I guess. How come Marjorine is four shots for more points and this is seven shots for less? It makes no sense.

Butters relies heavily on the bumpers for the AWESOM-O mini-mode and for the high-yielding dress-up Butters score. As long as I wasn’t on AWESOM-O the ball would bounce around like crazy in the bumpers. But, as sure as the sun will rise, whenever I was on the AWESOM-O mode, the ball would bounce out after a single goddamned bump. Two bumps at most. It was so uncanny that I’m convinced it’s rigged.

The other modes are under-paying and just totally average. Turn butters into a vampire by shooting three orbits and then the saucer three times. Put on a Hawaiian shirt and shoot fifteen orbits with a multiball. There’s also a couple side-quest multiball modes as well that are the same basic modes with fewer targets and an add-a-ball mapped to the generous vari-target. I normally hate vari-targets (they’re my least favorite pinball targets) but this one is clockable and relatively safe off a brick. Sadly, most of the mini-modes are quite dull. The only one we all universally enjoyed was the Ninjas side-mode. There’s four ninja targets and you have 60 seconds to shoot them for 150,000 points a hit. They respawn five seconds after being struck down, but if you can complete all four within five seconds, you score ten million points. Again, I can’t stress enough: none of us HATED Butters. We just hated that no amount of skill can overcome the slingshots, and the complete lack of balance. But, let it be said that the Williams-like layout and simple angles makes for a nice bonus to go along with the unforgettable Super-Sweet. Now then in the spirit of Butters, GO TO YOUR ROOM, ZEN! YOU’RE GROUNDED FOR THOSE SLINGSHOTS!
Cathy: GOOD (3/5)
Angela: GOOD (3/5)
Oscar: GREAT (4/5)
Jordi: GOOD (3/5)
Dash: BAD (2/5)
Dave: GOOD (3/5)

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Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (Pinball FX Table Review)

October 12, 2023 by Leave a comment

A New Hope
aka Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Set: Star Wars Pinball Collection 1 ($23.99)
Designed by Peter “Deep” Grafl
Originally Released April 29, 2014
Included in Arcade1Up’s Star Wars Table
Awarded a Clean Scorecard by The Pinball Chick Team

You have to wonder if they knew a decade ago they would some day make a My Little Pony table if they would have saved a horseshoe shaped table for that.

Our family nickname for A New Hope keeps getting more and more elaborate. It started as the “Big Horseshoe” then it became the “Great Horseshoe” and now it’s at “The Great and Powerful Horseshoe.” This is probably how religions get started up. By 2025 it’ll be “The Almighty Galactic Horseshoe of Divine Holiness” and we’ll still be unanimously stuck on rating it GOOD. It’s the definitive middle of the road Zen original that both delights us and breaks our hearts with its squandered potential. Still, there’s no doubt that A New Hope holds up in 2023, nearly a decade after its release. But, a decade later, all the warts that were inherent to it all along are more and more glaring. Despite the playfield being made almost entirely of orbital shots, you have incredible freedom in A New Hope. Each of the orbits is tied to a bonus mode, and the T-U-S-K-E-N orbit is also the mode start. Getting into a groove building combos is incredibly rewarding, especially since they were spot-on valuing combo shooting.

A New Hope jerks off with its animation too much. I’ve had multiple instances where I nail the Hidden Skillshot dead-on, only instead of, you know, GETTING POINTS, the ball explodes because the table is STILL loading the playfield because there’s so many useless animations. Sometimes modes take FOREVER to get going or to end because it takes forever for a stormtrooper or Obi-Wan to waddle their fat asses off the table. WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS, ZEN? Everything should be already in place, but Zen crammed so many masturbatory animations into this pin that sometimes the speeder is still positioning itself and the ball bounces off it, or sometimes a stormtrooper literally scratches their head looking around. I often have to hold a trap for 15 or more seconds waiting for everything to reset after a mode ends. That’s beyond ridiculous.

A New Hope’s biggest annoyance is a magnetic playfield in the dead-center of the playfield that randomly throws your ball, potentially down the already deadly outlanes. That magnet is such a weird decision. I guess it’s supposed to be the force field of the Death Star, but my question is: why does it fling? Just have the ball bounce off it like a wall. Also, several of the main modes (especially scene 6) and the hurry-up bonus mode require you to shoot ball onto a temporary mini-field in the center of the screen to fight enemies, but sometimes the physics and the ball don’t cooperate and the ball just plain explodes for a soft reset. The modes are NOT generous with their time, and since it takes too long for the ball to reset, it only really serves to create frustration. There’s also just too much reliance on luck in the bonus modes. It’s not really possible to guess (or react quickly enough) to the Tusken Raider, and the video mode (along with its ultra-valuable extra ball) is totally random.

Oscar on Mode Balance: Ideally, side modes in pinball, once you factor in the work to activate them and the risks of shooting them, have full parity. A New Hope’s side mode balance is completely out of whack. Both the Cantina shooting gallery and A New Hope’s Video Mode have the ability to light the valuable extra ball lamp within them. Lighting the video mode, where scoring and rewards are 100% luck-based, requires you to to light the letters A-L-L-I-A-N-C-E on the non-dominant left side of the table. A relatively higher risk shot for an unknown reward. Comparatively, the easier to play shooting gallery requires one fewer letter (C-A-N-T-I-N-A) across what is arguably the table’s primary orbit. Both orbits feed the R-E-B-E-L lights that drive the modes, but you’re incentivized to shoot A New Hope left-to-right due to the left outlane being much easier to defend against. It’s a tiny lack of risk/reward parity that throws the balance of A New Hope into the garbage disposal.

There’s lots of other annoyances. A New Hope has some of the most pathetic kick-backs ever. They sort of lightly volley the ball up and onto the playfield, but the gentle arc created often throws the ball right between the flippers. I’ve had multiple instances where a kickback sends the ball straight down the drain. Like, straight down it, and man alive, does it piss me off every time. I don’t know what Zen’s fetish is with this kind of weird “could only happen in video pinball” invisible force field kickbacks that don’t really help players and instead, just as often, are worse than trying to manually defend against the outlanes. I have to go back to what I’ve asked of them a million times: do you want to make good pinball tables or do you want to be a complete f*cking assholes and troll your customers? Because you can’t do both at the same time. A New Hope is a potentially great table that they took a sledge hammer to, and I don’t get it. Why would you do these things the way you did them when it doesn’t add challenge so much as it just trolls the players? I want to note that my sister is calling me a “cry baby” right now, as she likes the way this handles the kickbacks. She’s adopted, and I’m the reigning arcade mode World Champion of Star Wars: A New Hope as of this writing, so my word counts and her’s don’t. Thems the rules!

Then again, the Death Star modes are all pretty dang good. I can’t imagine it’s possible to better mimic the most iconic battle scene in sci-fi better than A New Hope does. It saves the table!

What frustrates me most of all is that A New Hope could be one of THE elite Star Wars tables with some modifications. Shortening-up the modes would be a good start. We’ve been playing these tables for four years now, and A New Hope is one of the tables we’ve played the most of any Zen table. It’s arguably THE signature table of Zen’s Star Wars pins. Yet I’ve personally never started the Wizard Mode, and Dad and Angela each only have reached the wizard once apiece. Ever. Going off the leaderboards, it would seem 99.99% of players never get that far. There’s just too much work getting there. The hurry-ups don’t offer enough time, especially on a table that wants to look good more than it wants to play good (this is known as Russell Westbrook Syndrome, or at least it should be) and thus it could take FOREVER to get the ball back to the flippers. I will never understand how Zen can see themselves get more attention for classic Williams announcements, but then go so overboard on creating their modes. You don’t need a mode to be a multi-tiered, almost no room-for-mistakes marathon. The most popular pins of all-time didn’t do that. What are you trying to compensate for, Zen?

I’ve had these blaster shots roll up the lane and down the outlane. Made shots should never have potential to die. Ever.

Most of our records are set by Angela these days, but I am the reigning Star Wars A New Hope Arcade Mode World Champion at the time of publication. Also, my father is A New Hope’s One Ball Challenge World Champion and Angela is the Distance Challenge World Champion and a former Flips Challenge record holder. VICE FAMILY DOMINATION!

For all my whining, there’s a reason why we keep coming back to A New Hope, and not just because it’s the first table alphabetically. Long as the modes are, they never feel like a grind, like some Zens get saddled with. It’s a good case study on how fun a Zen table can be even when they screw up so many things. The layout is iconic. It should feel gimmicky, right? It’s f’n giant horseshoe right in the middle of the table. That’s ALL it is. But it works. The multiballs are all exciting AND challenging. The rails are brutal, BUT, you’re giving enough nudge warnings to defend against them. Angela, our best player, credits A New Hope with learning how to defend the outlanes with Zen’s physics. We all agree the biggest problem isn’t the magnet or the long modes: it’s the lack of focus. A New Hope doesn’t do any one thing spectacularly. It tries to be all-encompassing of the video pinball experience. That’s the thing about being a jack of all trades: they’re masters of nothing. Apparently, that includes The Force too.
Cathy: GOOD (3/5)
Angela: GOOD (3/5)
Oscar: GOOD (3/5)
Jordi: GOOD (3/5)
**CLEAN SCORECARD**

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A Samurai’s Vengeance (Pinball FX Table Review)

October 2, 2023 by 2 Comments

A Samurai’s Vengeance
Platform: Pinball FX
Set: Honor and Legacy Pack ($9.99 MSRP)
Included with Pinball Pass
Designed by Zoltan “Hezol” Hegyi
Originally Released June 8, 2023
Awarded a Clean Scorecard by The Pinball Chick Team

For a newcomer’s first designed table, this really feels like it would earn a student an “A”. Really, it’s only compared to other original works in Pinball FX that a Samurai’s Vengeance falls a bit on the bland, conservative side. But, it falls HARD on that side, so much that it nearly missed out on a clean scorecard.

I hope new designer Zoltan Hegyi and Zen Studios don’t take this the wrong way, but A Samurai’s Vengeance felt sort of like a Zaccaria table. Which isn’t to knock Magic Pixel’s pinball stalwart either. They’ve put out many fantastic tables. What I mean is that Samurai’s Vengeance takes a generic theme, hits every single cliché to go with that theme, stretches the mileage one would expect you could get out of it to near breaking point while somehow not managing to include one single memorable shot, and yet the end result still ultimately ends up being a decent table. Sorry for the run-on sentence. Samurai is so by-the-books that it doesn’t feel like your typical non-licensed Pinball FX release. Maybe that’s a good thing, and for the record, I’m a-okay with busting out all the conventional themes and tropes. It’s pinball. If you can’t be unserious in a serious way, you’re doing it wrong.

The lack of memorable modes or shots does sting quite a bit here. Like so many Zen tables, a lot of Samurai’s problems come down to modes feeling like a grind. In the course of our dueling, which usually involves dozens of games, we never once activated the Random Fortune. Not a single time. It requires you to shoot the Torii gate a whopping eight times. Why would we even do that when all the important shots for the modes are on the other side of the table? We can spend our time grinding up a random award that may or may not be worth the effort, or we can shoot the swinging door katana sword or the spinner to grind up our strength, and then try to start a mode. We know the modes have value. The other side is just a whole lot of busy work. The multiball requires four balls to be locked, and that’s if the ball lock is even lit. The risk/reward wasn’t balanced properly, because none of us wanted to shoot that side of the table at all. It was too risky when we know that completing the modes yields a final tally of ten million points plus all the scoring that leads up to it. If you’re going to grind, grind the modes, right?

A Samurai’s Vengeance is one of those tables that makes me wish, once again, that Zen would move away from these slow, multi-tiered modes and instead try to replicate the style of pinball’s most profitable and successful era of the 90s. There’s a reason why their most popular tables are recreations of arcade tables from that era: that’s what people like about pinball. A Samurai’s Vengeance has massive pacing issues beyond just requiring so much grinding. When you start a mode, there’s about a fifteen second delay between the mode start and the ball reaching the flippers to start playing again. Mind you, there’s no animation for this. It just takes that long to load. We’re NOT going to get invested in the characters of a pinball table. We’re invested in shooting targets. Now, having got all that out of the way, A Samurai’s Vengeance has good flow, no really offensive flaws, and even a couple gags that gave me a chuckle. I literally said “oh, you bastards” when they happened, but I also laughed. Will you remember it when you finish it? Not at all. Is it decent enough while you play it? Yep.
Cathy: GOOD
Angela: GOOD
Oscar: GOOD
Jordi: GOOD
Dash: GOOD

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