Saturday Morning Gaming: Pinball M

I’ve mentioned before that I’m a big fan of pinball games. And I’m a *HUGE* fan of the Pinball FX version of video gaming pinball.

So I saw that Pinball FX came out with a new set of tables rated M and I was immediately both intrigued and vaguely irritated. I mean, it’s pinball, right? Why make it “M” rated? What would “M” rated even mean when it comes to pinball?

Well, as it turns out, it’s mostly allowing the tables to use curse words. There’s some “gore”, I guess… there’s some gross imagery in some of the tables… but, mostly, I noticed that Duke Nukem swears a lot and so does Chucky. So if you wanted to hear Chucky curse when your last ball goes down the gutter, you don’t have to worry that you’ll hear a bleeped version. Nope, he comes out and says it. (If you ask me, they could have easily made Wrath of the Elder Gods, Dead by Daylight, and The Thing into rated E tables with just a little judicious editing of some of the special effects.)

It’s a separate game because some people have age-restrictions on their Steam profiles and the FX folks want everybody to be able to continue to play the “E” tables and putting a single “M” table on Pinball FX makes the whole game “M”, even if what you’re looking to play is A Charlie Brown Christmas.

So that’s what the “M” means, as far as I can tell. Well… how are the tables?

The tables are pretty good. Some are better than others, of course, but there are 5. Wrath of the Elder Gods: Director’s Cut, Chucky’s Killer Pinball, Dead by Daylight Pinball, Duke Nukem’s Big Shot Pinball, and The Thing Pinball.

Wrath of the Elder Gods is the game that comes free with the “Free to Play” download of the game. I think that it does some interesting stuff with the ramps (though those side gutters seem to have magnets on them).

The Chucky table is, if you ask me, the weakest of the five. It feels like there’s way too much open space and nowhere near enough to do. (Though maybe I just don’t have the skills required for this particular table).

The Duke Nukem table is chock-a-block with crass references to Duke Nukem 3-D and Duke Nukem 4ever. Voice clips from those games abound (“if it bleeds, I can kill it”, “you sure are ugly”, and so on) and you’ll visit some of the classic areas from the shooters on the table itself.

The Thing is probably the best table. It plays clips from the movie and has you do various events from the film. Hurry up and go up this ramp, hit the target, and so on. It does a nice job of making you feel the urgency when it announces that “nobody gets in or out of here!”

All in all, it’s a good set of tables and the bundle comes with a discount and you should absolutely jump on it if it’s on sale (which, next weekend, I’m pretty sure it will be).

So… what are you playing?