niiice update! genies wide-body implementation is pretty beautiful/impressive and AFM plays fast and furious (had serveral side drains, so it's not too easy). portrait table-menu is back (still not perfect but ok, it's better)... why do i still have to swipe to select a table? why no direct selection or at least scrolling with flipper controls (left/right/start)? main-menu is still butt ugly anyway, it's going in the right direction... next table pack: "dr. dude" (never seen/never played IRL) and "firepower" (classic steve richie table, kind of spiritual predecessor of T2, with similar layout and gameplay) edit/bug: just had some troubles with genie... ball loss wasn't recognized properly, so the game gave me five "unearned" extra balls... thanks genie
After a few games I think, the new tables are ok. Genie plays right, with the right difficulty, like all older tables from farsight. Attack from Mars seems not to be so easy, as some other of the new tables. Still think, that the flipper fingers are a bit to long. On the real table., I had a lot of drains between the flipper fingers, when I was attacking the ufo. Not here.
Yep, pretty solid release of tables this round. Excellent work FS lads! Menu system still needs a rethink and rework.
Next tables Dr Dude:boring, Firepower:Nice. To the guys from farsight: The best widebody table is not Genie. Paragon, believe me, is by far the best widebody table ever designed.
Just checking: total cost of buying all the tables for this now, at the lowest possible prices, is around $74, yeah?
Doing some quick calculating that sounds about right yeah. I got all tables as soon as they came out,but if you want to dive in now and are an obsessive collector it's a pretty steep price.
Sorry if already answered a zillion times, but what does one get by purchasing a "Pro" table other than cheat codes and a strategy guide for the table?
PRO mode You get Table View... a nice flyover higher rez view A weird ball steering mode which I haven't bothered with and the Operator's menu which let's you monkey with settings like you could for free in Timeshock and the other Cunning developments tables. Some tables, like Elvira's Scared Stiff also add some sound samples that got left out of the iOS version from the real tables. The XBOX live and PSN versions seem to have all the sound already, so only the iOS and Android versions got shorted, I guess to save file size. Finally, you get 'Pro notes' interest play tips that you could get from the net for free... things like 'shoot the right orbit over and over to build the bonus' blah blah.
Attack From Mars is such a great game. PA still has annoying (to say the least) bugs. I had a good total anialation going and then ended up in a 1 ball Multiball. That drained and then it went into endless ball search. I tried "Call Attendant", but it said "the ball is not stuck" and canceled it. I ended up having to quit the game. Most of my games were fine, though. Genie is a pretty fun game, but getting a 5x multiplier is tough! I wonder if that shouldn't have been a wizard goal.
It's much easier than the real table though. The ball almost never drains in the middle when shooting the UFO. This is the exact opposite of the real table.. most of the pinball pro's always say you must be very careful when shooting at the UFO. The most common strategy is to try to get a multiball right after you get the shield open. This way you minimize ball draining by shielding the drain with your other balls.. and once two of them drain (which they will!) you haven't yet lost the game/round. The middle drain frequency is directly correlated with how steep the angle of the table is.. as with most farsight tables, the angle seems pretty shallow. I was able to get to 10 billion points in my first game, which is again way more than I've ever managed on the real table so I'm quite confident in saying that AFM in pinball arcade is one of the unrealistically easy tables. Having said that, it plays marvelously! They must have done something to the physics of the flippers as they now seem to have inertia and "wobble". It's easier than ever to catch the ball and they behave very predictably. They just seem more believable now. EDIT: I also had a very nasty bug in AFM where I lost my high score after restarting the game the next day. It just wasn't there anymore.. sigh. Cheers! bManic
Game Impressions I just figured out a trick that might already be obvious to the real veterans of PA. Something that has always bugged me with the PA updates, especially if an idiot like me with all ofbthe tables (although no pro versions) is that it was never clear which of the dozens of tables, besides the newest, has been updated. Now I just found out all you have to do is highlight each table from the main selection menu and listen to the theme music. If not the theme music/sounds of that table but just the PA generic music, that table has a new version to download in this release.
Yep, I've noticed this as well. They tweaked the color saturation on TZ and removed the barrier in the pop bumpers and it looks great.
Great stuff, two new tables today - Firepower and Dr Dude Its amazing, how many tables is that now - 24 is it ? Another 2 coming next month, what an app Just bought them and shall be giving them a good go in a moment. The Pinball Arcade newsletter mentions icade support, be interesting if theres some 'new' icade device coming out or how they'll use the current one. But either way love the app
Totally agree, It's the best app/game by miles! It's also the most expensive one i have (also have all the tables) by now, but that's totally worth it! EDIT: it's not the most expensive app i have! Navigon gps is the winner
Dude frame rate seems to chug a bit on my iPad 4, doesn't seem smooth. I like the table well enough, but I may wait on buying. And Firepower, I drain off to the side too often, that's usually the first thing that will turn me off on a table.
Just a question. Trying the game on my iPad4 i've noticed in the configuration screen an option for post processing. I enabled it but the framerate dropped a little but the game was not fluid anymore. You know what exactly this option does?
Post processing option: its a different lighting/render option that for now, is too CPU intensive for us to use (IMHO) Firepower: I am not knocking the outlane opinion, you are no alone bitgod, but I do feel farsight can't win. Either the tables are too easy or they are too hard/annoying. In my own opinion, although the iOS version of firepower does not play exactly like my real life table, they did a great job and yes, in real life, there are games where I would think the outlanes are evil. I think they did a great job with this simulation, its not a cakewalk and good games dont happen every game. I hope to see more of this difficulty in future tables.
