Will add to the smack talk, a lot of this is in jest as these are two great pins.

AFM is an amazing pin but it isn't better than LOTR's as it has one of the most repetitive rulesets in pinball. Shoot the middle shot 5x to save the first country, then 10x, 20x, etc. Ugh, talk about a monotonous task. Now it's a fun monotonous task but after a while it gets very old. Of course AFM plays faster, any game would with such a wide open playfield and little to stop the ball. Also, the points system in AFM is joke. 10 million points for hitting a standup target? That's probably the all time highest score on WOZ lol.

LOTR is still a fast pinball machine and offers stop and go moments with plenty of variety that keeps players coming back for more. Then there's all the layered multiballs with multiple stages, progressive based main modes that tie into the Gift of the Elves feature for beating them, and multiple wizard modes including one of the best ever created with that being Destroy the Ring.

That's the great thing about LOTR, in a way it has multiple games within it. You can focus on beating modes to unlock Gift of the Elves awards, attempt to get through the various stages in the 3 main movie multiballs to then get to Destroy the Ring, then There and Back Again, and finally Valinor. Those last 3 items, the games wizard modes, give it legs for years of ownership after thousands of plays. Damn it I may need buy this game again lol.

Keith Johnson, the games programmer, put it perfect when he said a mode like Destroy the Ring is for a great game while a mode like Valinor is for a game of a lifetime. A cousin of mine has owned a LOTR since new back in 2005 and has 6,000+ plays on it. A few years ago, around 12 years or so after owning it, he told me how he was amazed to unlock this new mode called Valinor after thousands of plays. That was another moment that cemented LOTR for me as one of the best pins ever created.

POTC lost to LOTR in my opinion due to a lack of assets and a majority of its modes being rather generic as a result. Pirates only has one set of callouts you ever here and while they are great it's only one and ever one (those provided from Kevin McNally). The chapter modes in Pirates are extremely generic and lack a sense of progression without any unique movie clips / animations being played as shots within the mode are made, same goes with it's multiballs. When you finally do get to a wizard mode there's only 1 set of callouts again and for some reason it's only one ball.

LOTR is the complete opposite with custom callouts provided by two of films actors plus the game having actor audio from all 3 films. The use of licensed assets combined with layering multiple stages within modes helped create one of the best rulesets in pinball. With callouts from multiple actors and custom animations for each mode the atmosphere in LOTR regularly changes whereas with Pirates it always seems to be the same if that makes any sense. Pirates is an amazing pin but I think the lack of licensed assets hurt how fun its modes are and the games overall potential.