Frax's ratings

I've been the unfortuante recipient of having to play this game in tournaments a few times.. I want to be clear about why I'm rating it the way I am. It seems there is a surge of love for this game right now....you're not going to get that from me.

Art: Pointy people yay! To be honest it doesn't bother me much, but at the point where it's on the cabinet too, that's kind of where I draw the line and am "bleh" on the art. I think the playfield choices were interesting with the banana-sub, but the frogmen divers, not so much. Still trying to figure out how many criminals have used a sub to pull a 'caper'. Oh wait....cartels what? Guess they called it back in the day. ;)

Rules: Are confusing as crap. Even someone that owns the game failed to explain it to me in a way that was intuitive and approachable. Lock stealing....really....the ONLY reason I'm even willing to give that a pass is because there's no possible way for an EM to handle that other than to kick out the balls during the end of ball sequence. Oh....that actually would have been acceptable, nevermind. :| The game is not approachable at ALL to novices, and even to experienced EM players like myself, many struggle to deal with the game rules or make the shots. It's more punishment than enjoyment to me. I just don't find the game fun to play. I don't think it's clunky, it's just that it's a very difficult game, especially for a 2" flipper game.

The weakest point of this game is the fact that the Flower Value carries over from player to player. I love the game, I own it, but the scoring as far as that goes really causes it to not be all that viable as a "high score" or "competition" game. Flower Value never ever resets on it's own.

Fully rebuilt, the game is FAST and crazy. The pop bumpers at the bottom are killer, but loads of fun, and the side lanes beside the drop targets allow you to get back up top and manipulate the flower value by getting the middle pop bumper, but are challenging to hit. It's a tough, tough game when it's all tuned up.

Had the chance to play not one but TWO restored examples of this game at TPF 2014 in the tournament area. Just a fantastic game when it's dialed in and cleared. Fast, fast, fast. The game does a great job of making sure you want to pick off the last drop target on every bank by having 3 banks and tying them to multipliers. Also, it makes sure you don't keep shooting the same spinner on the right side by having the rollovers by the flippers potentially light the opposite spinner for 10x value.

Game constantly has multiball. If you don't enjoy the chaos, STAY AWAY. Oh yeah, and SHOOT THE PYRAMID!

My rating is based on the sample game. I do NOT have drop targets for the SKATE, but I do have the full flashers in the backbox.

Have owned the game for 3 months, approx 300 plays on it in my home, and another 50-100 on various location machines.

I love this game. I picked it up for a song, and it's my first widebody to own. Dialed in, this game is a beast, and I do not have the extended lane guides, so no easy drain avoidance here! Love the lights and sounds, it's the one game the kids can turn on and play and it doesn't drive me nuts in the background. :)