Drove down to the Pinball Lounge today and finally got to try this out. I put 10 games on it to try and give it a fair shake. I'm a pretty big fan of both Star Wars and Steve Ritchie. The short if it is that I really wasn't impressed.
The good:
The music obviously
The speed
The lightshow
The bad:
That is one empty playfield.
Quite a few STDM or weird ricochet shots (really I had 2 go off the right flipper and over everything else into the left drain)
The tie on spring. A friend was watching and thought someone added that as a joke mod.
Whack a mole tie destroying.
Pops are kind of an afterthought.
The indifferent:
The rules. Lots of options here. I know some people are going to love this, but it didn't make up for the shortcomings for me.
The video clips. These were nice, but I didn't feel immersed in the game or connected with what I was doing on the field. Especially when stacking objectives as they threw the timeline way off.
The LCD. This has potential, but certainly isn't showing it now.
The art. It was serviceable but nothing special.
After driving 2 hours for this I was looking forward to playing it all evening. After playing 3 sets of 3 for $2 games on it (and one match), I was done. I then ended up playing quite a few other games there. Aerosmith just felt more fun and with a more vibrant light show. Star Trek felt more satisfying (which surprised me as I've enjoyed it before but didn't expect it to hold a candle to Star Wars). MMr and NGG ended up sucking up most of my time and money.
For me this ends up pretty far down my list of modern Stern games. I'd rather play MET, TRON, AS, POTC, LOTR, SM, GB, TWD, ST, or AC/DC. It isn't a horrible game, just not one I enjoy. And after 10 games I felt like any more on it would be wasting time instead of playing something better. If I want my Steve Ritchie fix I'll just play my BK2K or go nearby for No Fear.