Pinside rating

This game received 77 approved Pinsider ratings and currently rates 7.905 _/10

7.905

Top 100 ranking

This game ranks #60 in the Pinside Pinball Top 100.

Score breakdown

Score breakdown in the 4 main categories:

Game design: 7.597

Artwork: 7.941

Sounds/Music: 8.271

Other Aspects: 7.827

Rating comments

There are 29 rating comments for this game.

Pinside staff rating

This is how we, the very knowledgeable (wink wink) Pinside.com staff & moderators rate this game. 1 of us has rated this game.

7.957

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Ranking history

An overview of this machine's ranking over the last years. Lower is better.

Rating history

An overview of this machine's rating over the last years. Higher is better.

Found 29 ratings (with comment) on this game

There are 29 ratings (that include a comment) on this game.
Currently showing results page 1 of 2.

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9.940/10

29 days ago

S.F

Attackstefan

Pinside apprentice

Unknown

<1y 10,500 7

Hello I want to describe my first impressions of the Alien LE here
As a fan of the movies I had always kept an eye on the device.
After the highway bust, I was again in doubt, then have one from the last
Get production .. what should I say did not regret it.
Rarely is a topic so well implemented.
The two displays in the field are super integrated.
The atmosphere in the game is unbeatable.
An infinite number of different shots but sometimes very difficult, combined
with the great sound and the gloomy playing field just awesome.
Of course, the sound contributes to the game and quiet is not fun.

The alien is in no way different devices.
Anyone who likes the movies and likes to flippert should test the device, you will be amazed.

9.296/10

29 days ago

PVW

pascal-pinball

Pinside member

13y 71,925 1,091 208

This is a fantastic game.
I am so glad I found one.

8.740/10

46 days ago

TDK

TomDK

Pinside member

5y 58,300 641 26 2

Bought a late Alien and was surprised, out of the box fully working.
In this machine are several very good ideas for cabinet building. The technical aspect is, side by side with Full Throttle, unique ... unique means not bader than other producers.
The game itself creates a perfect atmoshere ... Alien style 100% !!
The gameplay is a mixture from well knowen shots of other pins, nothing really new expect the left outlane.
The game is fun, great sound, great light but .. be aware ... the producer no longer exists. No schematics, no manuals, no spareparts .. expect what the pinside community figures out and reproduces.
With around 200 games a keeper and collectible item. Even the producer does not exist afterall the price of this machine is rainig up.

I never say "never" on keeping a pin. Too many came and went off .. but Alien will stay a little longer. I have a gameroom with 10 games, so Alien fits perfect in the collection. If you own only one game Alien will become a little boring with the time.

There are 2 x 5 missions and 5 x multiballs plus several extra modes. Great animations, great sound but (like on PB2K) you see them repeadly.

TomDK edited previous rating on September 08, 2018.

7.848/10

6 months ago

DJB

WW2GURU

Pinside member

Spruce Grove, AB

7y 32,300 75 3 9

I played an early version of this pin in an unfinished form and with some of the settings dialled down so ill have to revisit this review some other time. I love the theme being a big aliens fan. i thought the face huggers were very clever. The dark theme is great. The playability and shots weren't quite there for me. There have been code revisions and play field parts added since then so hopefully I can like it like i want to.

9.740/10

8 months ago

KDL

klinde1

Pinside member

Jackson Twp., OH

7y 48,650 119 11 39

Awesome gameplay the rules the sounds the theme integration is amazing. It draws you in and you want to play it again and again. The Alien team has produced a very addicting game mission accomplished.

klinde1 has owned this game in the past.

7.895/10

8 months ago

MRO

MEROPARIS

Pinside member

Paris

7y 43,750 4 136

after 2 hours i like it , not fast as a got or star wars ( that i love ) , very different slower wide body feeling , excellent theme and ambiance , like the videos on the big screen , some difficult "x men/tron" shots with upper flippers , a good pin ( lot better and original than guardians of galaxy or aerosmith for example )

MEROPARIS edited previous rating on January 15, 2018.

7.798/10

10 months ago

SDG

T-800

Pinside member

Saint Paul, MN

6y 90,800 1,452 8 28

Alien is a great game. The layout does a good job of utilizing the full space of a widebody machine. There's plenty of shots and most of them are very smooth and well dialed in. The audio is outstanding and well integrated with the game. The rules are a little difficult to follow but just takes some time. The "toys" are very well integrated and pull the theme together - the alien head lock is one of the coolest toys I've seen in recent pinball. My biggest issue(s) with the game is that the upper right flipper does not have a consistent shot to feed it, and that flipper is critical for the extra ball and super jackpots and other shots during the game. you have to get lucky in getting a shot to feed the flipper properly (even a combo of right lower flipper to the mid left flipper to the upper right flipper is not 100% as the ball often will bounce into the pops and out instead of hitting the target and then coming back down to the upper right flipper). The playfield and plastics artwork and animations are really well done. Personally, I can't stand the cabinet though. Aesthetically and functionally this is an issue for me. The lockdown bar/glass has sharp corners, the glass with bezel is very heavy and a PITA to remove, the cabinet while being cool that the art is backlit, looks like there's hardly any art on it with too much black space. The modularity of the cabinet could be a winning notion though if pricing on future modules comes down.

2 Pinsiders starred this rating !

9.640/10

10 months ago

AST

Astropin

Pinside member

6y 108K 7,342 4 39

I've had my Alien for a while now and it's the best pinball machine I've ever played (and I've played just about everything that's out there). It's the whole package that makes it great...theme, code, sound, video. It just all comes together to scream ALIEN (and ALIENS). 15 modes, tons of shots, four flippers! Every mode is unique...throw in the use of earned "weapons" (fired using the launch button) and it really adds to the strategy. It's not an easy game...the shots are tight and some are at odd angles...but once you figure it out this game can really flow and show some blazing speed as well. I hope Heighway makes it and keeps cranking these out because everyone who wants one should have the opportunity to own one...great game.

Astropin edited previous rating on November 10, 2017.
Astropin currently owns this game.

3 Pinsiders starred this rating !

8.391/10

10 months ago

MOF

mof

Pinside member

San Francisco, CA

5y 117K 8,716 27 85 1

I need much more time on this table.
I got in roughly 6 games over an hour.
The game had a few glitches, but I didn't allow those to impact my enjoyment of the game.
I'd rank this in close to playing Embryon.
The shots felt good.
The game overall feels a little clunky, not as smooth as a modern Stern.
The shots are FAR more interesting than a typical modern Stern -- which I greatly appreciated.
2 spinners
4 flippers
many orbit shots
bank of drops

mof edited previous rating on January 05, 2018.

9.703/10

10 months ago

MAM

drypaint

The Flipper Room

Concord, CA

1y 39,950 84 19 19 1

This game is absolutely amazing. Other than the overall lighting for a dark room its almost all 6's for me. The Heighway team has some work to do as far as QC on machines that leave the factory so if you are going to buy this one, you need to have patience when setting it up, but hopefully they can get their stuff together and start shipping games that need less set-up time. Holy crap! This is THE BEST PIN of 2017 and even longer! Great shots, great rules, amazing sound and call outs. more more more...

drypaint currently owns this game.

9.660/10

11 months ago

TPK

Kneissl

Pinside member

6y 108K 3,089 4 109

I'm a few weeks and maybe a couple hundred games deep so here's a more in-depth review:
The game is incredibly immersive with very good flow (when you're on it) and packed with shots. I'm very happy with the purchase. This is my second NIB.

The build quality is better than stern, maybe on par with JJP, probably with a little less polish. There's a few funky things going on with the plastics, the ramps have some holed tabs hanging out. (maybe they took out ramp entry switches?) Wiring on the playfield looks pretty nice overall, you can tell they took out a proximity switch sometime later in dev, the cabinet wiring could be cleaned up a little better. Probably all these things will iron out further in production. I got confirmation plastics are acrylic, although it is much thicker than any game I've seen. The same goes for the metal parts; much thicker than modern stern mechs. Oh, and the backbox. I thought it looked kinda lame in pics, in person it's much more impressive and fits well.
On to the game-
This thing has shots!; easy, super hard, back hand, across the way and (awesome!) combos. The hardest single shot is the chestburster (up the lane just left of the right flipper) it's doable from the lower left flipper, but we're talking Tron gem shot, I doubt anyone can rely on hitting it this way. Fortunately this is easier (but not easy) to hit from the upper left flipper. This leads to combo shots, the best being lower right flipper to mother kickout, to chestburster to upper left ramp. The game tracks endless combos as long as you don't repeat the previous shot (can't go left ramp, right ramp, left ramp, etc.) I've also noticed the game has some combos named, kind of like the Picard maneuver in STTNG i'm not sure if that's more points or what.
The sound-
Probably the biggest factor in how immersive the game is. It's just well done. Seems like it's got a large variety of call outs, I don't think I heard "game over man, game over" the whole first night I played it. I dig fishtales, but if you leave a ball waiting to launch the music get really annoying. Nothing like that here. This game keeps some cool low key music going and drops a random callout now and again. Switch between modes before starting ball one and you get some cool story progression in the callouts.. I think i'm just scratching the surface here guys.
The Art-
I've got a standard with backbox screen, so I can't comment on the large egg or the LE Xeno. Backbox art with the screen looks good to me, the lit sides look really good. The playfield is cool, not super busy, but lots of details you notice over time, if you've seen the reveals from @aurich, you know what you're getting.

Kneissl edited previous rating on December 31, 2017.
Kneissl currently owns this game.

4 Pinsiders starred this rating !

7.957/10

11 months ago

JLM

jlm33

Pinside Moderator

Villejuif

6y 138K 5,398 6 167

Pros:
Very good theme integration, great movie clips, great toy (Xeno Head) and original ruleset.

Cons :
Odd layout (feeding the upper flipper is not easy), a bit slow (as compared to Full throttle, another widebody), some bugs remaining, dark GI.

6.956/10

1 year ago

MOD

modfather

ModFather Pinball Mods

Sunrise, FL

4y 88,150 1,566 8 83

Cool game. Left ramp seemed slow to flow.

7.744/10

1 year ago

JAY

doompin

Pinside member

2y 47,800 125 8 65

Great game but the artwork is such a missed opportunity. How this thing isn't a biomech masterpiece is beyond me. Looks like a modern Stern, photo-shopped and half assed. The playfield toys are really cool though.

5.515/10

1 year ago

W*W

Lawlor_and_Order

Pinside member

2y 67,400 21 85

I got a chance to play this on-location, and fed a lot of quarters into it only to find it's got significant bugs. The other Heighway game was in much better playing shape (the motorcycle game) and hands down I'd rather play that one.

It wasn't just the bugs that suddenly stopped the game from time to time, or left the machine thinking it had balls when it didn't; the game just stopped having flow of any sort, and while the playfield looks like it might as least be as good as your typical Stern, there just wasn't any consistent ball rhythm to the thing.

I will say the jaw-droppingly impressive back display nearly swayed me, or rather, it did inveigle me into putting a few more dollars into the machine. The theme allows you to pick from the first two Alien movies (sort of two games in one that way) (what, no love for Alien Resurrection?) and the animated video display on the back shows super well-done versions of the heads up displays and shooting style from the movie. It has real potential in that sense to be a great theme pin.

But in the end, it was deadly boring because of the failures and the multiple ball hiccups (particularly with the "plunger" and scoops). Not knowing exactly when the machine is going to burp and die is not the kind of tension one wants to build up with _Alien_.

7.861/10

1 year ago

PPD

Boat

Pinside member

Calgary, AB

2y 65,800 488 3 75

The layout wasn't really working for me. The extra flippers didn't do much for adding value to the gameplay. The game was repetitive with the constant "find the acid" "find jonesy". Sounds and animations/video were great.

9.720/10

1 year ago

JCS

jeffspinballpalace

JeffSPinballPalace

15y 190K 5,727 454

Great layout. Dynamic theming. Incredible sounds. Fun alien head toy. Color LCD and graphics. This game will settle in as a top 20 game and be enthusiastically embraced.

jeffspinballpalace edited previous rating on March 19, 2018.

9.700/10

1 year ago

DTY

libtech

Pinside member

6y 69,150 1,654 40 1

Dark, foreboading, immersive. Sums up Alien, great layout, sounds, animations and rules. Most atmospheric game Ive played!

9.660/10

1 year ago

OLI

O-from-DO

Pinside member

Dortmund

1y 31,300 43 9 17

This Pin is almost a 10 out of 10 when it´s working... but unfortunetely issue fixing after some matches is still the biggest problem of this pin.

O-from-DO edited previous rating on August 11, 2018.
O-from-DO currently owns this game.

8.432/10

1 year ago

YOS

Yoski

Pinside member

Miami Shores, FL

3y 84,400 394 21 133

I had the chance to play many games on Alien. The engineering of the game is absolutely superb, probably the best ever to date. Modular design, with wire connectors everywhere. The artwork is impressive, even cabinet decals are interchangeable along with the playfield. No wonder they ran into financial problems considering the effort that went into each game and the money they charged. Hopefully that gets straightened out, I would hate to see a company that build such a wonderful machine go under.
The game play is fun with lots of good shots and the alien toy is coll when it picks up the ball. The upper left flipper is of marginal usage. The lighting is the only real complaint I have. The game is way too dark which makes it difficult to follow the ball. Some light mod could easily remedy this problem. The game is fairly difficult and the ball likes to drain in the outlanes. The bottom flippers are relatively close together and have a post in the middle, so drains rarely happen there. However, their up angle is very minimal which makes it challenging to cradle the ball. The flippers have the right amount of power to accomplish their task but not any more than necessary. I experienced little to none airballs and other unusual behavior that can put undo stress on playfield components. The ball didn't get stuck once during the entire time we played on it.

7.033/10

1 year ago

REW

woody76

Pinside member

Nashville, TN

3y 97,550 2,090 67

I think my rating would be a little higher if it did not break down every other game.

woody76 edited previous rating on December 04, 2017.

6 Pinsiders flagged this rating/review.

6.196/10

1 year ago

BRI

mountaingamer

Pinside member

6y 60,650 900 17

Xeno head did not work, lights out and clunky shots when I played it - I can’t stand the drama Heighway has caused (Andrew).... I feel they are going under and hope people get their refunds or games.

mountaingamer edited previous rating on July 09, 2017.

6 Pinsiders flagged this rating/review.

8.148/10

1 year ago

904

HighProtein

904 Pinball Zine

Jacksonville, FL

7y 144K 4,930 24 426

So, after playing an ALIEN this weekend a lot in a home environment with the volume up and an external subwoofer attached,
I must say that it lived up to much of the hype it may have, it lived up to most of what I wanted it to actually be and it left me
really wanting to play it more and if the planets and stars and craftmanship of the new management team aligns... I'd like one.

I truly enjoy some Early solid state era Wide body games.
I truly enjoy some 90s era solid state games.
It merges many great playfield characteristics of both eras.

The display in the backglass was very nice and very useful (I did enjoy how the clip artish inserts were utilized in the backglass
animation area to explain what shots to make, it was useful, tasteful and unique).
The movie clips grabbed were good and well implemented.
The mini display did add a fun flare and visual element to the playfield and actually makes more sense the a mini me version
of the queen alien that was to be there originally.
The display in the playfield on this variation of the game was inbetween un-required to semi helpful.
In a mega dark room, sure it could help, but in a kinda lit room it wasn't that helpful if at all.
But... if someone went with the small backglass screen or LE backglass, it would be required and helpful.
All of the shots are doable other than the inside ramp if the back legs are raised up.
The audio quality of the license assets were great as expected.
The code for me is enough where is sits and doesn't need too much added to be "finished".
The weapon selection option and usage functions were very unique, fun and fascinating to me.
The beacons are quite neat and aren't under or over used.
It'd kinda mean in the vein of BSD that you can have a really short game or a decently long and enjoyable one.

What I didn't care for...
The damn EXTRA Ball/Weapon selection button on the front left of the cabinet...
It's too damn close to the start button, it's the same sized and frankly why the hell isn't it on the left or right
side of the cabinet near the flipper buttons? Pinball people are accustomed to multiple buttons on a side or two at times.
It was missed just a little lighting in the middle area near the right ramp to me (no big deal).

I'll bite my ALIEN tongue from going on tangents about the game not being available to be and if/when...

But damn... I know this game would earn in the movie theater location I could put it at and many many many
non-pinball people would play it due to the theme and it's look...

HighProtein edited previous rating on June 20, 2017.
HighProtein has this game on the wishlist.

5.019/10

1 year ago

CAN

chrisnack

Pinside member

2y 56,150 666 3 17

It definitely plays different from others. It seems a bit slow and some of the shots are odd.

Absolutely fantastic theme and lighting effects. Cabinet is ugly and plain.

Probably gets better with time, but hard to spend the money if you only get a few games unless you REALLY love the theme.

chrisnack edited previous rating on June 10, 2017.

5 Pinsiders flagged this rating/review.

7.569/10

1 year ago

CJC

Tuxedomask23

Pinside member

Calgary, AB

1y 30,800 34 3 32

Not a huge alien fan but an aesthetically great machine. The shots did not do it for me and I didn't realize there was an upper left flipper at first.

Tuxedomask23 edited previous rating on July 31, 2017.

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Alien (Heighway Pinball, 2017)

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Rating history

Found 29 ratings (with comment) on this game

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