High Speed seems pretty OK (only played the demo like 4 times)...But the music drives me nuts. It's not a favorite table of mine from the little I was able to experience. I'll definitely buy Season 3 as it comes out on Vita, but this one is like a Monster Bash or something to me...Gets a good amount of love, but just isn't for me. Sorry Shaneus - I know it's your favorite ever!!!
I think that's what makes pinball so amazing - there are SO many tables out there. There is someone out there who has a favorite table that someone else considers to be complete garbage (I'm not saying HS is garbage, don't worry). My personal favorite is Tron (if I haven't made that clear enough yet, haha). But I know some folks just don't enjoy that. AC/DC seems to get a lot of love, as does something like Twilight Zone (which I've found to be just OK as well).
Oh pinball...You so silly.
Hey, it's all good and nothing taken personally! You have to keep in mind with the music that it was literally the first game that had music playing in the background (as basic as it is). But if you think it's annoying, check out the next System 11 title
Grand Lizard. I guess with nothing to really inspire them in the way of pinball music they were largely in the dark... which is why for most of the game they stuck with the basic beats which are reminiscent of the repetitive, hastening tones in Black Knight and Firepower.
Everything has to be taken in context. Even though you might not be directly comparing the music from HS with, say, Tron (as an extreme example), you may subconsciously be with a game like Rollergames or early WPC titles like Funhouse/Bride of Pinbot. Hell, even compare the music to the original Pin*Bot and you can hear the difference a half-a-year on in the short history of solid-state pinball makes. I'd even hazard a guess and say that music for HS was closer to being an afterthought than a significant focus a la Getaway.
Anyway, figured I'd give you a point of view in case you weren't quite sure why you didn't like it. I just know I tend to appreciate things more when I understand where they come from
In non-TPA related news, put in a metric fuckload of time into Mustang today for a tournament at a Comic-Con-esque event in Melbourne. Qualified for the main event tomorrow (yay) but have come away from knowing a lot more about how Mustang works. Honestly, more than anything it's great (and surprisingly noticeable) to play a game that hasn't been designed by any of Stern's pre-Trudeau designers. Ritchie games all have a feel, Borg/Gomez games have a feel (neither of which I like *at all*, they are largely unimaginative to me) and even though I'm not generally a fan of Trudeau games, I do appreciate them. And this is a table that has a pretty solid design but feels different from all other Stern games prior. And I mean all since the early days of Striker Xtreme. I don't know quite how it differs... possibly because it doesn't seem to heavily rely on toys to make the game look interesting. I mean, it does have the car in the middle as a showpiece, but it doesn't have 50 bazillion fucking needless, pointless toys all around it like Transformers, Xmen or Avengers (or even MB... in agreeance with you guys). So yeah, the design has a very non-Stern feel to it, which I like.
On that point, that actually makes me a bit more excited for the JJ Lawlor table. I have a feeling it won't feel quite as different as Mustang though, mostly because Gomez and especially Borg have aped the fuck out of Lawlor designs for years. Just look at the lower right-hand side of Funhouse and Tron.
Oh, and there's an awesome little nod to Steve Ritchie in one of the modes on Mustang as well. Hint: It's somewhat related to one or two games we've discussed on this very page
Can give you more details if you guys want, but it was a nice little surprise when I saw it and was pretty happy it was there.
Happy to answer any questions you might have on it!
Sad news indeed...
On a separate note, my first game of High Speed was a fun one. Went in totally blind, and scored like 0, 0, 4.8 million (and somehow got two free balls), 0, 0. Haha... I played like 10 minutes on the third ball, and the other 4 were under a minute each. Managed to get all 5 basic goals unintentionally on the third ball, so at least there's that. The light shows for multi-ball and the sound bytes are fun, it's going to look even sweeter if we ever see that DX11 upgrade.
Challenge mode looks interesting. I didn't try it, but it looks like you get award points for playing a bunch of different tables over a single run depending on how you do in them?
Norman (the sound guy at Farsight) was somewhat... hopeful(?) that the updated lighting would/could be used to good effect to show off the topper on High Speed
