Before Star Wars was even announced, I had heard that this game was getting lots of hype from inside the company. I'm really excited to see how it's turning out. From what I understand, the reveal isn't that far off.

To address the poll, I can't answer any of that stuff at this point. I am not buying ANY game without playing it first anymore. For Stern games, I need to see more reliability out of SPIKE as well. But if it's as good as rumored, I'll be excited for the game.

Proper order of events would be to announce it before IAAPA to generate some hype and get people to come to their booth. Maybe just a small teaser or a reveal of some art and then a full reveal at the show.

The Avengers is garbage. Absolute garbage. It's riddled with inexcusable design errors. There's no way that anybody felt good about putting that game out. It's a rattly piece of pinball garbage. Clean shots reject, sloppy shots can't get there. What are you supposed to do with that? Rules are awful too. Bottom 5 Stern game.

Even on a "dialed in" Avengers, the plunge is still only 80% reliable. Rattle trap right from go on that game. How can you design such a problematic playfield though, for real? Stuckiest ball game ever created.

I won't ever proclaim a game being good or bad based on pics or video. I need to play it first, and I need to play it quite a bit. Iron Man is the best example of this. I remember everybody getting up in arms at the unveiling about how sparse it was. I ran over to the distributor's showroom downtown and met another local pinhead. We put an hour's worth of games on it and we liked it, even before the code had fully matured. Going in with a negative bias based on pics probably would have made it harder to enjoy.

With Star Wars, I was actually really excited to play it. It looked basic, yes, but that didn't worry much. But man, after a few hours on the thing, I just couldn't believe how big of a miss it ended up being.

Based on what I know, I have a lot of optimism for Stern's next game. But even if it looks incredible, I just won't know until I get good time on it. I mean, I was really excited by The Hobbit at first, but jeez, what a letdown that ended up being too.

The pro is certainly better. The additions that the jump ramp and hyperloop bring are minimal in comparison to the problems they bring with them.

I don't know what's going on, but it stays up whenever the shot to the Death Star is lit. So if you hit the right side of the horseshoe, I think it's supposed to bounce back out or drop, but I rarely see it drop, so the ball just sits there until ball search. Meanwhile your hurry up and multipliers expire.

Talk to JJ at Game Exchange of Colorado. Super fast service, free shipping, and excellent customer support.

Flow used to mean something though. It became a lazy catch all word though. It's like when someone uses "sleek" in a tech review. Totally meaningless.

But I think Rarehero is using it the right way. Star Wars has some disconnects in what it wants to be physically (a fast game with lots of combo shots and quick progression from shot to shot) and what it is on the software level (deep and methodical). A simplified software package would make much more sense for the physical layout of the game.

Ropp did fine with Aerosmith. Don't discount him until you see what he does.