I haven't played mine in over a month. I'm taking a long break from it, and coming back to it in maybe another month so see if I have a change of heart. If I don't, it'll be gone by summer.

It's a huge bash-festival. It's got the orbits, that all too rarely don't orbit and either hit the diverter pin and get rejected back or end up in the pop bumpers. On the rare occasion it's lit to orbit, it's fun to shoot. It's got two really nice metal ramps that are nice to shoot - and the rest of the lanes are dead-end bash targets:

Piston.
Fuel.
Grave Marker.
Sparky.
Captive Ball.
Snake.

It's a whole lot of the ball not really going anywhere.

The art is great. Best Stern has ever come up with. The game isn't in my top 20 as of now, for sure.

I bought the metal replacement that's supposed to deaden the kickbacks. I'll put that in before playing it again.

It's only one of the things about the game that bothers me. I had it disabled for a little while, but I think you need the pop hits in order to qualify the piston target, right?

I don't mind bash toys at all, but most of my favorite games with bash toys have situational bash toys. No Good Gophers and Cirqus Voltaire would be examples of this. Shot variety is important, and both games have lots of shot variety.

Getting back to Metallica....

I agree with the "grind" nature of Metallica too. That may be another thing I don't care about it. The feeling of a long haul.

Not a fan of the band or the music either. That can't help.

Please don't think I don't understand the rules. I do. I just don't find the grind at all satisfying.

That said, the guy who has the top score on the machine put it there within two weeks of me owning it, and did it by pretty much just bashing the center targets, and not really caring at all about the rules. Just keeping the ball in play.

The week before the 350m point game, didn't you have a 250m point game when neither of us knew anything about it, Adam?

I would like to be able to cancel the sparky sequence and animation. It's cool the first time, but after that, please kill it? k?

I've played all the CIU modes, 3 in one game... They're great modes...

But it's a lot of bash-bash-bash wood- shedding to get there...

I think working toward CIU is a grind. Blackened is a grind (have to complete the pics about a bazillion times?). Almost every "hit this feature x many times" game I find grindy.

Some of my favorite games are SEGA's. I don't think there is a single one in the top 100... ...

Like I care. I like what I like, you can like what you like. Where it sits on the list means nothing to me.