I had a seemingly epic game on Hobbit yesterday at Expo...and I ended up having a really great impression of the game. What a difference a year makes! Last year was just a big "oooph"...new art & a year of coding makes a hell of a difference. Sure, we can still look at the game and think "how would I do it better" - but I think it's past the point of "What can this game be" to the reality of "this is what the game is" ...and it's pretty damn good, IMO. The eye/ear candy is fanastic...excellent light shows, amazing music and sound, Smaug's lighting and talking choreography works wonderfully with the voice clips. The uplighting of the pop-up characters looks really cool. I started some multiball where (I think) the GI went dark and all 4 popped up with only their uplighting - it was really spooky and cool! The ramps are smooth and fun to shoot. I like the specific lights under the "Book" and "Time" cutouts on the ramps...made me forget about what I initially thought was a confusing phrase "Book Time". There are nice animation touches on the book LCD - when the ball is in the barrel bumpers, there is water animation splashing up on the book LCD. The main LCD is incredible, but I seriously couldn't look at it during gameplay. I won't pretend I understand the rules - but I could definitely feel that "organic" gameplay/flow that I love from LOTR & TSPP...it's that "Keith touch", for sure!

I have definitely gone from "not interested" to "I'd like to own this some day". Congrats to JJP & crew for pulling through some tough development to make a game that just might be very special.

Based on what i played at Expo, the game is *done* and the code is very very good. For those who ordered one, it's safe to say this is as close to shipping as the game as ever been. At this point it really just comes down to all the parts being in the factory to assemble.