Avengers

[WARLOCK]

Avengers is available on the floor at Starburst in Toronto to play. Right now! I went today to see this pin and to play it.
I am surprised. It is better than I thought it would be. Much better. I think Gomez pulled this one off. I am impressed.
I was not expecting to like or enjoy this game as much as I did. I had wished the code was complete before shipping.
I had wished it was classic comic book art on the cabinet like X-men pro "Jim Lee" (Marvel Comics) art. Hmmmm.

It didn't matter. Gameplay was fun, and they had me at "HULK" drop targets. I tried every shot on the first game.
That Black Widow ramp is a "b*atch of a shot. Drained ball #2 to try the shot. Hit the post to the right of it and boom!
No reward, bad risk shot. Ball #2 score = nada. However, I hit every other shot on the playfield on Ball #1 and #3.
Happy WARLOCK! I did not try the Black Widow ramp again until the next game. Then I spent 2 games on that 1 shot.

Hulk is awesome, Jackpots and Destroy Jackpots are kewlio. I guess I am saying, I liked it. Just go try it if you are able.

I had no idea what to expect. I am not saying it is better than X-men. I am not saying it isn't. It is different. That is good.
It is not fair to compare it yet as I have logged a lot of time on the various X-men machines out there. I can't judge a game like
Avengers in 5 games, but I will say that when you step up to the plate for game #1 and you like it very much and are close to a
free replay credit score on Game #1, you have the potential for a winner here.

I had to run and go to retrieve my children from daycare, so I could not linger today. Chris Bardon showed up and took over on Avengers,
so I assume he will post a much more technical analysis of this game after me at some point. If you can, go play Avengers and find out for yourself.

I can't wait to go back and play again.

 

[Chris Bardon]

Not sure how technical an opinion I have, but I did get a couple of games in on it as well. The widow ramp is stupidly tight, and really dangerous to boot. Missed shots are often fast SDTM. Strangely enough though, the way the sides work makes it reasonably easy to keep the ball from the outlanes, and the liberal tilt on the floor model didn't hurt. Collecting the avengers is just a series of shots, but there are really no "modes" to speak of (but there is increased scoring). Apparently you get "assault the helicarrier" for getting all the avengers, which I did, but couldn't figure out how to start it, so maybe there was something I was missing? I had all six flashing at one point, which made MB pretty valuable (although not the Loki MB, that was crap...). Not sure if it's a scoring bug or not, but I managed to get 60M in bonus at one point to do this:



Points as bonus for avengers hits, and a big ass multiplier from Shield targets.

Anyway, the speech on this thing is bad... Movie art but no movie actors? Still, the hulk clips are fun "Hulk never get bonus, hulk only get tilt", which could mean the rest has promise with more time. The hulk toy...doesn't seem to do much other than get the ball stuck (3x in maybe 5 games). The magnet in front of hulk (which is nicely hidden) can't throw the ball hear as hard as on other games just because of the stuff in the way. The back ramp is cool though (but different on the LE)-a little like the ones on CV or TOM with an orbit->ramp shot. I also felt like the ball spent too much time in the bumpers whenever it got up there, to the point that I was almost trying to shake it out of there to keep doing something interesting. And the cube? It seemed like one hit on the cube, no matter how many spins, awarded a single letter. Don't think I ever aimed for it on purpose (ditto with the shield targets).

Again though, rules are going to make or break this game, so we'll see what the software does.

 

[Beafraid]

i was there today too...when the Hulk targets were down i got the ball hung up behind Hulk's right hand 3 times in about 5 minutes..really annoying..

 

[WARLOCK]

Chris had the same thing happen to him when I watched him play a game.
It didn't happen to me, but a "pita" for sure.

 

[Menace]

Yeah, all of these ball hangups are common on the initial run games. There will be kits to fix these hangup issues for sure. Sounds like the game has some legs for the most part, and with Lyman behind the wheel I'm sure the rule set wont disappoint.

D

 

[Chris Bardon]

The hangups are just due to the movement of the hulk arms, so it'll be easy enough to fix in software with a faster ball search or maybe a higher idle position for the arms (which could be a hardware change). Might even be adjustable.

 

[Beafraid]

I spoke to guy at Stern today and he said the LE's were not a big as a problem for this as the pro for some reason. He said there are small difference which contribute to this..he also said that the rest position of Hulk's arms are adjustable but not sure if his arms would go high enough in the adjustment to allow the ball to travel under them.

When you look at the pics on their website of Hulk it looks like his arms are raised a lot higher in the rest position.

 

[nics135]

I am unpacking my Hulk tomorrow...will post some opinions tomorrow night. Do not expect much because I like Big Buck Hunter Pro.

 

[DRANO]

Looking very forward to playfing this. Maybe a little trip up to SB this evening is in order

 

[REVOLUTION]

Looking very forward to playfing this. Maybe a little trip up to SB this evening is in order

I'm headed there after work today.. around 3 though

 

[mwong168]

Looking very forward to playfing this. Maybe a little trip up to SB this evening is in order

Brock has already picked up a Hulk LE for a customer yesterday and delivering it tonight hopefully because the weather was pretty crappy last night.

I'm headed there after work today.. around 3 though

You sold another one Brock?

 

[mwong168]

Short video from Hulk LE green DMD

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0Rwd3ZonOYo[/youtube]

 

[REVOLUTION]

The Hulk animation is great.. and I love the Chitari voice on the game. You can also see how the game combines full screen and split screen, especially with the Captain America pop bumpers

This game's gonna be a hit for sure

 

[movingpictures]

Stern just dropped the pro video 30 mins ago...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=OGfjeLKwQXw[/youtube]

Happy Friday!

*high score #4 FUK* :lol:

 

[WARLOCK]

Thanks for the reviews everyone. Looking forward to playing Avengers again soon.

 

[Honey Badger]

I get mine next week, I will let you know what I think of it then Scott.

 

[tim.sanderson]

It looks like that vid was removed, MP. Here's the same (I presume) vid taken from their site today:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rOFJ2Yss9-c[/youtube]

 

[cooke]

Played this game all night tonight and found it to be challenging to say the least. I had what I believed to be a pretty darn good game and managed to light all of the Avengers but only managed about 30m. Not sure how Chris managed his score just playing the floor model. I never had a bonus over 2m. Has there been scoring adjustments with v1.1 vs. 1.0?

Anyway, the game is interesting. The shots are decent, but really tight. I find the playfield lighting to be very dark -- the red and green bulbs should really be white because the coloured lamps don't illuminate the playfield well enough at all.

Those who like a tough game will probably enjoy Avengers. The shots are tough and the rules will likely be very deep by the time they're finished.

And in about 40 games the ball got hung up by the Hulk once. It's a non-issue.

 

[McMean]

Had a chance to play this today at Nics135 - the Hulk LE. Very challenging, but then again I really stink. I think my highest was about 8m. I do like that the scoring isn't foolish - games that end up in the 100 billions seem silly.

Between Pete and I, I think the ball only ever got hung up once in Hulk - not a big deal at all.

Like it a lot more than many other new ones. Lotsa fun!
Daniel

 

[Chris Bardon]

So any word on what Premium pricing for this is going to be?