Quoted from markmon:

Yea, you know, I thought this until I understood the ruleset. This is a lyman ruleset. You'll get super easy way for casual player to get into say multiball. But that's not at all how you play the game. Instead, the game has a *ton* of strategy once you understand what you're doing.
Basically, you want to go for a crank it up mode. You do this by getting coffins, crosses, snakes, and sparkys. The obvious way to do this is to bash each of those areas. But that's also not what you want to do. You get a credit for every shot you make that also has those lights lit. So what you want to do is get those lit on every shot. When you complete the shot, you can get 3 of those per shot (one sparky, one cross, one snake).
The way you complete a lane to get 3 of those lit on it, is to shoot the lane, this selects it. Then hit sparky, cross, snake, now the lane is lit and flashing. Shoot the lane again and then bash the coffin to lock the lane. This will be locked until you start seek and destroy and every shot to that lane will be set to credit you 3 of those shots towards your crank it up. If a lane is selected and you accidentally hit another lane, that other lane becomes selected instead. So there's some definite ball control required to keep the lane you want selected and collect the inserts on it.
A really good strategy (and the one I used to get my 700 mil score) is to get a couple lanes completed then go into a multi ball and just hammer those lanes during the multiball. If you follow this, the odds are really good that you'll come out of the multiball with crank it up lit. Crank it up modes are going to be worth crazy points. For example, I went into my first crank it up mode with about 30mil total points and came out it if with 230 mil total points. The crank it up modes are awesome as you constantly get massive points per shot - and those points double up to a crank it up bonus which you can cash it. If you drain during the mode you lose your bonus crank it ups so there is definite risk reward on when you want to exit the crank it up and collect the big bonus.
Metallica is a masterpiece in software. Unfortunately, the rules are not intuitive. I think someone had to explain them to me early on. If you're just bashing the playfield toys to get multiballs going, you won't progress through the game nor will you score many points nor is there any feel of strategy in that. That's not the way to play.

Quoted from PW79:

The hammer scares me into going Pro if I ever get a MET.
Thread after thread I see different Pinsider's with a MET hammer story.
The phrases vary from "more reliable" to "captive ball" to "bank it off the snake" to "the shit just doesn't work"

Quoted from PW79:

I go back/forth on Premium vs Pro
Then I buy nothing... paralysis by analysis. Fucking Stern & my first world problems.
Every F'n MET thread has some hammer bitching in it. Even after all advice is followed by the victims.