I was afraid of this. The gameplay itself is wonderful, the tables are really good, and the physics are best in class. But the user interface and feature set of this game are barely beyond The Williams Collection, much less anywhere near Pinball FX2.

There's no resume feature, the leaderboards for each table are several menus away from the table selection screen, the menus look awful, you have to scroll through each table one by one to select a table, there's no avatar support, you STILL can't complete any wizard goals without first completing the standard goals, and the list goes on.

This really saddens me. I want this game to be a success, and I want them to make more tables, but this sort of thing just makes the development team look amateurish before the gameplay even begins. The presentation and feature set of Pinball FX 2 absolutely puts The Pinball Aracde to shame. For anyone who doesn't REALLY care about playing classic tables, or experiencing the best physics around, they're just going to see a poorly put together pinball title that's not even as good as a game that they already own.

Dammit.

No matter what happens, I'm done buying DLC for Pinball FX 2, and I'm very much looking forward to new Pinball Arcade tables. I just hope they'll find enough success to make them.

Well. As someone who generally doesn't enjoy any kind of video pinball games, I couldn't stop playing the demo for this and honestly want to buy it soon.

I was a little taken back by the "how to play" for each table (each guide has an average of 300 pages to read) but there was nothing that ruined the experience for me.

The game-play itself was what sold me, but I understand your sentiment on the User Interface. I think they need to work a bit on that, but as long as they release quality tables, I am a happy customer.

It does look like some of the multiplayer features in Pinball Fx2 or even Game Room would have been good for this as well as the camera types in Pinball Fx2. Overall they're not bad but the whole credits system makes no sense here, at least in the Williams Collection it did a little. Excited to see more tables they have & was hoping for more than reissues from the Williams Collection on this.

You seem to care too much about pinball.

I wasn't terribly impressed by their initial offering of tables - I would have hoped with so many licenses they would launch with more than four (I will also not be happy until I get my Twilight Zone Table). I hate for it to come down to style over substance, but it kind of does, the FX2 tables are just more fun to play, more animated - which is to be expected, they were never real tables. The physics are better but it feels flatter somehow.

This all reminds me of Guitar Hero vs. Rock Band, I don't want to throw away all the tables I've already bought, and I'm not entirely convinced to make the switch, but I can't see myself continuing on with both games. The new set of Marvel Tables looks pretty great but I'd also like to see how quickly TPBA can get some new tables out, and of course which ones they convert.

The other thing that kills me about this game is their decision to sell the first set of tables as the only way you can get the game itself. A huge advantage that Pinball FX 2 has is that the platform itself is free, and then you buy the tables separately. That means that the game is consistently on the XBLA top sellers list, which equals tons of free publicity each week.

At any rate, I'm still having a lot of fun. I'm especially loving the achievement system. Five basic goals, five wizard goals, and a high score goal beats the hell out of Pinball FX 2's three goals and three achievements. From the main table menu, you can even highlight a goal and see instructions on exactly how to complete it.

I'll quite likely be picking up every piece of DLC that they release. UI issues and some missing features aside, this game is fantastic.

@SteamPunkJin said:

I will also not be happy until I get my Twilight Zone Table.

Dude yes!

Pinball is pretty popular where I live. There's a few pubs nearby with Twilight Zone, Medievil Madness, Addams Family and Monster Bash. However I have never found a pinball video game I liked because of the physics (except Sonic Spinball which isn't really a pinball game per se).