I'm surprised we haven't gotten any play reports yet considering this game is on test now. Most of the time I don't care but for some reason I'm really interested in X-Men.

Ah bummer. Looking forward to some impressions here at some point.

I'm surprised this game isn't out on test yet with shipping only being a couple weeks away. You would think that they'd want to find the bugs asap before shipping any games with possible defects.

Game looks fantastic. What's kind of funny is that when I initially saw it, I thought that the spinning disc was the best thing then the moving ramp, and was only 'meh' on the nightcrawler things. After seeing it in action though, I think that the nightcrawler things look pretty cool honestly but the spinning disc and ramp are only so-so. I think it will be similar to the Tron-Tron LE thing where the games are pretty close in playability but there's just more flash on the LE.

And pbresource, lol.

I agree, POTC's problem wasn't the voices, it was the fact that 4 of the 8 goals were completely worthless, 2 were decent, and 2 were just ridiculously repetitive that made you shoot the same shots (ship and chest) over and over and over and over for like 10 to 15 minutes after you'd already completed the other 6 goals. On top of that, when you finally got to the end of those sequences (battle davey jones and heart multiball) if you failed to make the required shots (which are more shots to the chest and ship) you get to shoot more chest and ship shots. Really a shame because the game could have been so much more.

Iron Man, Stargate to name two.

Thanks a bunch for the video. I'm not sure how anyone could make any determinations about whether it's going to be a great game or not from it though, we didn't get to see much of the ruleset at all. It looks promising though.

Anyone have any gameplay/ruleset opinions so far? Surprised that there really hasn't been any short reviews so far, figured that people were playing them all day.

So for those that have the game, do the modes stack at all? Like can you have Iceman and Wolverine running together, things like that? Or is it like once you start Iceman, nothing else can run? That's a very important aspect to me personally. Thanks

It definitely is when you've got a game that requires X number of shots to the same place. In fact if they told me that X-Men doesn't stack the Hero modes, I'd probably be out...it'd be like having MM only being able to shoot the damsel ramp until you complete that, then having to go to the next shot...would make it way less fun. In fact putting a timer on it is kind of dumb already, that's not a good sign...if they had timers on the SM villian shots I know that would make the game less fun. Hurry-ups = ok, 9 shots identical shots or fail in 60 seconds = not good. I want to be able to stack like Iron Man, Tron, etc.

Thanks for the info. Can you possibly answer my previous question from up above, can you start like Wolverine, Rogue, and Phoenix at the same time? Or is it strictly one at a time?

Thanks for all the info Gambit, that's really good info. That all sounds really good honestly, I don't mind good characters not stacking as long as you don't have to shoot the same shot over and over in their mode. It does seem a little strange that you have to play the magneto multiball before doing anything else in the game, hopefully they change that...seems a little dumb that they make you do that first every single time. I can't imagine having to play black suit multiball every single time before playing anything else in Spiderman. I'm sure that they'll change that though, that particular requirement doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

What they really should do is what they did for Tron, if you don't complete all the Heros/villians then have a mini-sos type wizard mode where you try and collect them.

From the comments so far, there are some things that definitely need to be changed:

a) magneto multiball starting off the game every time
b) no progression saving
c) stackable modes, at least one hero/villian mode at the same time.
d) cut down on the number of shots to complete, 9 in 60 seconds is ridiculous.

Frankly, progression really isn't the answer...it forces repetition of the same hard modes every game, and will decrease the replayability. What would do the opposite though is a reward. So say you make 5 of the 9 shots for Colossus, you would get the light on the playfield and that's it. However, say you make 9 of 9 for Colossus...then his shot should be doubled for the rest of the ball. That removes repetition, adds risk/reward calcs, and increases the scoring possibilities.

Defeating a bad guy should do the same thing, like start like fast scoring, 2x scoring, super combo's, etc.

That's the way it should be done. No progression saving, pass or fail you should advance to the next thing, not be forced to replay it. I find that's one of the key weaknesses of LOTR...I love the game and I love the multiballs, but having to play each one 2 or 3 times a game hoping to advance wore on me after a while.

Hopefully they're able to fix some things. The game has gone from a 95% certain buy to about 50/50 for me now. Luckily the 50% doubt I have is all in the software and not the playfield, the playfield looks fantastic. The way it's setup now in software I would have doubts on the long term playability of the game, I'm afraid that eventually (400 or 500 games) you'd get to the same point every game where you'd get stuck, like OP multiball on transformers.

You're right, early code but the way things are setup right now means that to change it a lot of the design would have to be totally changed, which isn't very easy. Changing number of shots is easy, making things stack and work together properly isn't. I would expect to see improvements on the existing design not a redesign, which is why the current code makes me a little nervous. There aren't any games that I remember where they started out at 1.0 with no stacking and then all of a sudden at 1.1 had all kinds of stacking. Usually from 1.0 to 1.1 they add in missing features, animations, sounds, bug fixes, etc, not a rework of the entire software design. Perhaps this will be the game that changes that, I don't know.

The game basically just needs a few minor tweaks in software to become great. I really liked that video you just shot. I think I'd be ready to purchase a pro as soon as Magneto multiball isn't mandatory to start the game and some sort of progression/equalizing of shots is done to make getting farther in the game possible if you get to the mode for a 2nd time. Those should be pretty easy items, I can live without the stacking as long as the game doesn't become 'work' or monotonous, but with a few tweaks both those problems should be easily solved.

This is a great way to get started...for 100 to 200 games. Starting with the same sequence though will get very old though, any game that starts with the same mode every time suffers from this. That's why I think it needs to change, as it was a big negative on games I've played with it (BF, RS, GNR, JP, etc). In fact I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't buy it unless they change that due to prior experience with that on early 90's games. I actually can't remember a game in the past 15 years that had this issue though.

Yeah, I would agree with that. If things stacked, restarting is no big deal. Since they don't, restarting a mode you've already completed basically screws you for the 30 to 60 seconds it runs. Let's hope that they correct this and the mandatory Magneto in the next update, or at least have a configurable option.

Well, it's pretty close. You know what I mean.

Hey Rob--

Take off one of the weights and see what happens. I did that on my SM to 'tone down' the effect a little bit. It might stop your 'clanking'.

Except for on MM it almost makes more sense not to shoot the Jackpots at all and just shoot the castle, regardless of the what the jackpot is because the castle shots are so valuable and dangerous at the same time. That's how I made it to BFTK a couple weeks ago, I just ignored the multiball jackpots, shot the castle, and ended up with like 157 million or something like that. I think somebody calculated it out at some point and figured out that the best scoring strategy was to do that (which ironically also is the best strategy to get to the wizard mode).

Unless you're in tournament play and the mode isn't worth very many points, or if maybe you're about ready to reach the wizard mode, I have no idea why you'd time out a mode even if you could, which you can on quite a few games. What would be the point? Advancing to the wizard mode just for the sake of getting there, forgetting all the points along the way? That kind of sounds lame and boring. DugFreez, you're the only person in the 7 years I've been reading message boards who says that they're unable to control themselves from timing out modes, lol. I'm not sure how you'd watch anything on a DVR, you'd probably just fast forward to the last 2 minutes just to see the ending.

I understand what you're saying (loophole to the wizard mode basically) but at the same time it's like installing a cheat code to warp from the beginning to the end of Diablo III, what's the point of warping all the way to the end when the goal of the game is to play and have fun? Plus the ultimate goal of pinball isn't even getting to the wizard mode, it's points.

The drones and im targets have to be completed three times but not on one ball. That's only for the do or die multi ball wizard mode. Completing all five characters on one ball gets you do or die single ball wizard. Completing the iron man chest symbols over your game gets you to jericho wizard mode. Only one of the three wizard modes is actually mandated to one ball.

How do you achieve all the extra balls in X-Men? I know Nightcrawler is one of them, and beating four villains is another, but it seems like there are even more.

Having played both I think that the pro plays better. The Wolverine is positioned better on the pro, doesn't have the annoying iceman ramp (which misses that switch on the right inlane, which is major bummer )and doesn't have the nightcrawlers which stop the flow. There's somebody on here that owned both, and his opinion was that the LE wins on the bling factor, but if you're just playing it the pro plays better. I certainly think that the LE lighting looks way better for sure.

It's done outside of some wizard mode bugs that probably won't be fixed.