This is the Blockade Pimple Podcast. I'm your host, Chris Frebus, aka Shut Your Trap. Joining me as always, halfway across the world, is Jared Morgan. Hello, everybody. How are you all going? All right. Well, here we are. We wanted to delay doing this next one because we wanted to actually talk about content that we knew was coming out. But before we dive into any and all of that, I just wanted to mention, I went out and saw a play, Jared. Oh, you saw a play? Which one did you see? I went and saw the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Oh, okay. And I got to say, it's a pretty fascinating stage show because it is magic tricks left and right. Oh, really? so they lean right into the whole magic thing that's cool I was reading about it afterwards the tricks that they pull off the guy that designed it was basically saying most of the stuff is things that could have been done on stage 300 years ago they're not it's not technically marveled it's a lot of old school practical things and one of the things that blew me away They really play with the lighting on the stage, making areas very black behind, but your characters are fully lit. But then all of a sudden they start floating up in the air, and you're like, wait, when did they get hooked up to wires? And you realize it's not wires, it's dudes in completely black suits that you cannot see, even if you know that they're there, that are lifting them. Oh, really? They're actually raw eyes? Yeah, I mean, like, that's just one of the things. There's sleight of hand. There's, I wouldn't call it quick changes, but there's a moment where they, you know, take Polyjuice portion, and all of a sudden they, like, melt into their coat and immediately pop up as somebody completely different. And you're like, where? And they're in the middle of the stage. You're like, I don't know how they did that. You know, there's all sorts of really interesting stuff there. I love that. I love it how they've taken what is probably considered in the magic circles pretty pedestrian tricks, but combined with a story and a narrative, they are really impressive narrative tricks to telling a story. Yes. That's really good. That sounds really cool. Yeah. So you would recommend going? Yeah, no, it was really cool. I mean, obviously, we're seeing the traveling show, not the Broadway show, the touring thing. but um you always get the touring show down here in australia yeah right i know we get the broadway cast coming down here um i was able to get really nice seats um at a decent price because i guess it's not selling well and you can uh jersey jack's probably finding this out too um because there's a lot of people that just plain straight up refuse to give money to anything harry potter anymore oh right because of because rowling yeah and i'm one of these people who i've i've never had a problem separating art from the artist yeah like poppy juke and pinball type of thing yeah you know it's it's i'll put it to you this way i love going and seeing mission impossible films yeah i don't really care for Antonio Cruz as a person i certainly don't uh no you know i'm fascinated by Scientology, but oh boy, that's a cult if I've ever seen one. Yeah, that's not a hashtag we're going to be putting in the description of this video. No, no. Now, I recognize that me buying a movie ticket, that is putting money into his pockets, and that's money that he's going to then put into the church. He's already got paid. He's already got paid. He already got paid. Yeah, that's for well. No, sometimes he takes back end, like a lot of times he takes back end. Oh, yeah. Right. Oh, yeah. He'd be smart to with a franchise like Mission Impossible. Yeah. But a hundred years from now, when he's long since passed and nobody cares, they're still going to watch the movie and go, damn, that was good. Right? Yeah. And that's the thing. There's a lot of media. There's a lot of things. I'm sorry. Henry Ford was a straight-up racist. Yeah. But that doesn't mean I wouldn't drive a Ford. You know what I mean? It's. Yeah. So for me, there's a there you can you can do separation and separate the art from the person. Right. If you said and every ticket that you buy is going to go 100 percent to this foundation that is anti. Well, then I'm going to have a problem. Yeah, that's right. You know, then I know, oh, my dollar actually is paying for this other thing. But that's not. for that um have you have you heard some of the uh comments regarding the jjp uh no i haven't actually have you seen the launch i saw i mean the table it's i think it's it looks a little bit like a bill of materials issue like uh if you know what i mean like it's if you compare that to the avatar table which i've actually had hands on recently because okay pub oh geez it's it's an incredible piece of pinball that then you look at the the harry potter table and you go yeah it looks nice it's got the moving stairway i get that that's that's a nice little sort of diverter thing but i'm just not getting the sense of shock and awe that i'm getting from something like avatar i think what they're going for is more that rule set is insane like or i shouldn't say the the paths it's bonkers how much material you know is actually in this um i watched the the the release video and uh you know the guy was saying how passionate he is about you know this ip and you know he was not going to do it wrong and blah blah blah uh the ultimate edition the the mina lima edition who is this graphic designer that did the outside cabinet or the outside cabinet are beautiful in that one oh the art looks good um like for sure but then you bring in the the haters and well they took a close look at the artwork on the playfield and it looks like an ai filter was run through most of it and really people are up in arms over that because this is a fifteen thousand dollar table yeah and that's us dollars down here to be like 25 000 yeah um and so and in the video the guy was saying how he absolutely wanted hand-drawn art and then all of a sudden people are like that's clearly ai that's clearly ai and there's this i was having this discussion just the other day that gen let's go gen z and alpha alpha it'd be probably gen z are so if as soon as they find out that ai is used for anything they're like i'm out they get screw you this is 100 bad and then you put that on top of their hate for rowling and it's like like people are literally saying I'm not, if you put that in your shop, I'm not going to your shop, I'm not playing in your tournament I'm never putting a quarter into this thing like, whoa just put the pitchforks away and put your burning torches down as well, come on, it's just a pinball machine I also think people are feeling burned apparently collector's edition, but it doesn't have an end number and it's the same thing that happened to Guns N' Roses and the Guns N' Roses has dropped in value by like half oh it has yeah and so I think people are also very much being mad at JJP in general for that because it's like hey if you do a collector's edition oh and unlimited supply of championship editions we won't be buying them so anyway I'm not going to say I wouldn't recommend diving in to anybody but going into the comments was a bit like going on to a yahoo comments section where it's just well as jared said pitchforks um oh man yeah yeah the golden rule of the internet is never look at the comments and yet here i am looking at the comments of our videos just so i can comment back but uh you know fortunately all of you have been relatively safe with us yeah other than that one video we've had contingent episodes you guys you folks have been fantastic like we i i will go on there and read every one and chris will also go on there and read every one it's it's like honestly i love i love looking at the comments so don't think that we're just like a faceless machine faceless machine um we will read everything we love it so we're doing this you know we don't get paid for this yeah but we really just love doing the the episodes each week for you all so i also saw a uh i don't know where i saw the post but it was from retro ralph uh who's like said bye bye to video games this is nothing but pinball now yes welcome to the dark side we have cookies and i mean he was showing a picture i guess he had installed pin stadium on his kong and was asking what people think and i don't know if you feel the same way jared but i kind of have always felt that pin stadium is for tournament players that don't want any excuses for why they drained the ball lighting being one of them so it's just just flood the flood the play field with lights but you you know our opinion has always been especially on something like attack from mars or circus voltaire where there's a specific mode designed for the dark that pin stadium would ruin completely yeah pin stadium unless it turns off you know during that mode but i don't Yes. So pin stadium, if you can link it into the general illumination, so it actually follows the cues of the GI. Okay. And if it's super well integrated, if it integrates into like the actual lighting effects, so like when flashes go off, the pin stadium lights flash or whatever, it's really effective for that. but I would agree that there are some times where lights turning off are actually necessary. And I noticed that when I was playing the getaway in VR, and when you go into multiple mode, you might recall in the actual game, and I think it does this on Pinball FX Flat as well, where the lights dim and sort of shimmer. like they have this like they turn them down half and they sort of just pulse them a little bit they sort of shimmer like that where you know the the you know the announcer's going you know subject ran a red light over and all that and then it kicks in with a big flashing light thing so the one thing that we're missing on on vr is that because of the room lighting like you can hardly see the gi dim at all um and it's like a it's part of the light show and it's a shame you can't see it. So, back to the Penn Stadium thing, like, I think having it integrated properly really does enhance it. But, yeah, just having it sort of there on all the time, you may as well just, I mean, it's there so you don't have reflection off the glass, right? So, because it's under the glass, you're not going to get reflection. But, I don't know, I'm in two minds about it, hey? But, you know, if it helps, if you like the look of it, then, hey, it's your game do what you like with it you know yeah i just don't think it's the end all be all i don't know yeah but again i'm not a tournament player i just want i i enjoy the glow of the machine in a darkened room that you see i am a tournament player yeah and i like i like the originality of the games like if you my take is that if you need pin stadium i mean okay there's one example where it could have been handy. I was playing a mouse and around, and it was, I think there must have been a pretty cooked pin on one of the GI circuits, and it was dim, like barely on. And we were playing this game at night in a brewery with, like, not great lighting. All the other games were relatively well lit, and you can actually see the ball travel around the playfield, but this mouse and around was just... I think I see the ball. And you're looking for glints off the ball as it was floating around the play field. So it was almost like playing strode multiball in Attack from Mars. And it's sort of like looking for the ball as it traveled around. It was a real challenge to play. So I would say as a tournament player, the minimum expectation is good GI, and that should be enough. Particularly on these like modern Stearns and and jc jacks which have so many leds in them you don't need stadium lighting in them at all like there's enough light floating around um hey i did uh wind up downloading and installing the quest game optimizer oh you did yeah i did um it's not an easy experience no there's there's some hoops to jump through to get it going i already had side quest installed um which also had some hoops to jump through you know how much i enjoy the hoops um not not at all is the answer to that question at the at the same time my uh free three months trial of Meta Horizon Plus is coming to an end in two days. Oh, man. So I get to say bye-bye to a couple of the games that I've been playing. And so, yeah, Puzzling Places and Walkabout Mini Golf, which I'll probably be buying Walkabout Mini Golf. The Puzzling Places, I'm kind of bummed, but then I'm also like, there is so much DLC for that, and it's not necessarily cheap. Oh, really? Well, I mean, it's like $5 for a pack, but they're already on pack 32. Oh, geez. So it's like Rock Band level of DLC. Yeah. So I'm going to be curious to see what the base pack costs. Because, of course, I don't get to see any of the costs while it's all Meta Horizon Plus. And I'm really kind of bummed because the Walkabout Mini Golf was only $15, and then they were going to add in these other packs and make that part of the base game. And if you already had the game, they were going to be free. They were going to raise the price. But now the price is up to $24 for it, and it includes those. But I had no way of purchasing it. It wouldn't let me because – Oh, you couldn't actually buy it while you were on the month-by-month? Nope. Nope. No way of doing that. that's i was like that's lame that is that's all that's strange that they would not let you you're like if you find a game you love so much yeah that you they won't let you buy it when you're on the subscription yeah it's weird like isn't it it's just that's a weird weird quirk of meta um no things things we learn uh in other news uh before we talk about tomb raider um on the at games they came out with Tales of the Arabian Nights oh Totan nice Totan and how's it play it plays really nicely quite enjoyable I killed it on my first game like rescued the princess and everything and then went wait a second there tricks of getting really high score and then proceeded to like over the course of a week just have terrible scores because i was trying to stack or do whatever as i'm trying to remember what i used to do to just like destroy on this game oh do you mean like the lightning lamp times three and then just keep spinning it until you die well but but then it's can you time that with multiball so you're just randomly hitting lightning lamp times three and going similarly can you get and i don't know if this is i can't remember if this was a glitch that zem fixed or if it's still in existence um but it was when you have rocks which is sending the ball up to the pop bumpers and you're just like racking up score up there. But if you can get that, I can't remember if you can have that going and then activate a multiball, so you can be sending two balls up there or not. Or if there's a way of starting harem multiball and then starting that. So there's a way to get just a massive score out of the pop-bombers, and I cannot for the life of me remember what I did to do that. There'll be a guide. Oh, I'm sure there's a guide somewhere. I just haven't bothered. Totan guide. There'll be one up there. But you're right. Like, your experience on Totan was my experience this week on Junkyard. Because I want to tell you all about this community-run tournament thing that we're doing through the Pinball FX Discord. board um we're doing a williams table every week and the focus um the the studio were kind enough to tell us uh on the day and approximate time when the leaderboards reset which is um monday monday morning my time sunday um us but it's it's in the thread about when it resets which is where the folk organizing it like you know declare the winner and it's really easy to join in like if you've got vr you just go to the thread it's pinned in the general chat of pinball effects and go in there and it's like whenever you get a uh a score that you think is better you just like take a screenshot with your device and you do that by um holding the right trigger and pressing the meta button on the top of the controller and it'll take a screenshot and so you look at the scoreboard and you go take a screenshot and then share that into the discord um and that's like an update or deleteable because there's no there's no tournament mode integration yet in pinball fxvr okay the the neat thing is that like thanks also to um hard rock who is a zen employee he's one of the QA folk that's looking after FXVR, they were able to you know, I really want to give Hard Rock a shout out because they're really engaging on the forum and just really open with sharing the information they can share about the game. That's not like you know, super off record, whatever. Really generous with that information. So thank you for being so generous with sharing. so yeah they were able to help us work out sort of how to self-organize and it's it's so much fun like you just pick a table and what i do is i i put whatever the table of the week is in the favorite table slot so whenever i go into the game i just uh i had that table and i go oh maybe i should just check to see how the the weekly leaderboard's going so what you do is you go into the game you bring up the leaderboard you switch to the the weekly tab and that shows you the current leaderboard for that week that we're running it in so um you'll probably miss the junkyard tournament if you're just watching this when we broadcast but the next table will be medieval madness ye olde medieval madness so uh jump on in and put your best score in pro mode it's a pro mode tournament um which makes it super difficult um and it's so much fun like a really good bunch of folk competing in there they're all um the same folk that have added their usernames to the meta ids for um competitive pinheads thread which is also pinned in the general tabs they go and check that out if you want to compete against like-minded pinheads so everyone who's in that is sort of hanging out in the tournament and we're just having a ball it's really good vibe um it's actually a similar vibe to sort of like the blockade discord where we're just sort of chilling out and having a good time playing pinball. It's the closest we're getting to a sort of pub-style meta Horizon room. We're doing it asynchronously. Make it happen, Sam, please. Yeah, right? Because we're vibing it real hard. We love going in there and talking about the score. I've managed to, I think, at the time of recording, I might still be on the top of the leaderboard for Junkyard, but it was like, I posted the score and said, well, that was just an exercise in extreme swearing in about 20 games. Because it was so hard. Like, I was fighting every inch of the way for like the 14 million or something I got. And that was like the highest I could get. Yeah, I think with Tales of Arabian Nights, It's a thing that I'm really enjoying on the cabinet, is that once you do get into that mode where it's unlimited balls, as you were rescuing the princess, I'm so used to playing on the controller and just thumb press launching, but I can also hit the triggers at the same time, right? Yeah. To flip. You can't do that. You've got to physically reach down, pull that plunger and launch, and then hands back on the and it's crazy how quickly you lose balls just as you're doing that reach and plunge oh yeah and going and i'm i mean it's putting a nostalgic smile on my face because i see yeah that's exactly what you want it is it's exactly what you want and so it's like having to do those physical labor. It's the same thing with Getaway. The thing that we're all missing is the actual shifter. The risk associated with doing the gear shift. And most of us learn to shift with our knees to do it. But it's still, or even on all your stir machines, it's that reaching over and slapping the fire button in the proper direction. That is a risk. It is. Like, on a stern machine, it's like, ooh, okay. I've got to be strategic about when I do it. Particularly where the stern are being smart, and they've, like, coded in some modes where you have to press and hold to act out a feature, which is, like, even more devilish. It's genius that they've done it. I love it. But it's, like, really risk-reward. Like, on Godzilla, to activate the death ray, you've got to press and hold, and it has this, like, bar that goes up on the screen. And you're going, oh, the ball's coming towards me. Ah! We don't risk it. Don't let it dead bounce. It's a really great risk reward. I love it. Yeah. So I'm looking forward to it. They actually officially announced it, X-Arcade. They are having an add-on kit to the controller deck for the arcade to TVXR that will put a plunger in. So there is one of the compartments on the underside. That's basically where it's going to attach and wire in. and then they're also going to be able to uh you're going to have haptics that are inside of this thing and an accelerometer for nudge so those very things that we were asking for are going to be uh added in i think they're saying they're taking pre-orders in july and then with delivery delivered later on the like september october yeah yeah that's right so no price yet uh has been announced but i think that's like you look at the ads that pop up for it on like facebook it pops up all the time for me now and all it ever advertises is pinball it does not it does not mention x or the arcade ranger or playing arcade games at all they're full on just going yeah you want pinball and vr use this deck so i think once they get that thing attached that'll that'll be big i actually wanted to give a on this on the subject of this new add-on kit need to give a shout out to um papa brad's gaming um the they did a show um that touched upon some um uh internal not internal news but they they got some really good details about what what's actually going to be in this upgrade they gave some more meatier details and uh it was actually in the um again the pin thread people are getting accustomed to my standard of setting pin threads in in discord i'm the i was the only one doing it for a while but everyone's going oh pin threads are kind of useful uh so uh they they there are going to be two solenoids that they're going to put into the the haptics um they will be you can turn them on and off um they will also um make the the haptics not just exclusive to um fxvi will be available to um pretty much anything that you can use the um uh the x arcade with so you so if you're playing vpx vr yeah it'll function it won't need technically I would say that there's elements of it that would be easier than others like the exciters so not the actual actuators but the exciters like the speakers you're going to get that sort of thing, no worries at all. And they were saying that the guys in the show, it was a panel of four dudes and one of the guys was saying that it's going to be like if you turn they believe that there's going to be specific sliders in pinball effects to control haptics so they're going to have adjustments in there so you can dial up the haptics one of the things from X Arcade were saying if you turn down all the game music you'll actually be able to hear the ball rolling you're going to hear um they're gonna have the built-in speakers which will actually send the audio from your meta quest to the actual x arcade and blast the sound out in front of you so representation of like standing in front of the the cabinet and right rather than just headphones displaying it all yeah or the um you know the the meta built-in surround sound right which i'm actually i'm taking a leaf out of your book chris and i'm actually not using headphones at the moment i'm actually kind of digging it like i i like the ambient sound i'm getting really used to that and i'm getting used to the sound of those things out but they're not shabby like the the speakers that are in the quest they're not terrible like you're getting decent sound for especially for pinball yeah you know yeah so like there it was a really good really really good um episode there was like um if you want to check it out i would recommend you jump into the pinball effects discord take a look at the x arcade to tv vr user thread and what a word seller that is but um um go there scroll down towards the bottom and you'll see the link um to um uh the the video and they give you a timing point it's about 27 30 into the video they start talking about it worth checking out if you're if you're into um xrk but it sounds really promising and i'm really glad they shared it on their show it was good information to get all right excellent all right yep let's uh let's move into the the meat and potatoes of this entire uh episode and that is tomb raider pinball launched on literally every platform that zen has hit available which is oh yeah very interesting we need to uh we need to talk to them and feel how that how they felt uh lining that all up in the simultaneous release yeah yeah so um you know the same day that i got it uh on pc i got it on my uh at games cab and i got it in vr so it was just like pick your poison where you want to play it and i love that and which we're going to get into this uh in a little bit but it's interesting my perception of the tables based off of what i was playing it on oh really yes i know that jared is uh jared is no longer flat pinball he is vr pinball exclusive i am vr and cab pinball only uh i can't do that i can't do the pc anymore so uh i think what we call the cabinet like we got flat being the the screen we got the cabinet is it like 3d flat i mean it's still screens on it it's still flat pinball but it is because because you can still play cabinet mode without a cabinet yeah you can you know that's what i was My whole monitor rotates. I can put it 90 degrees and play it that way and get a fairly close approximation. At games, I still love what they do or what Zen is doing for there where there's no key stoning. It just fills up the entire slot and looks great. Yeah. I don't understand why they don't do that for their own program. They do it for… You wouldn't need to buy that games. But they do it for the mobile. Oh, do they? Yeah. If you play mobile, that's the same view on mobile that you get in ad games, basically. Right. So that's why I'm like, I don't quite understand. That's besides the point. Let's talk about Tomb Raider pinball. So there's two tables that come in this pack. By the way, pricing, interesting. I believe it's $10 everywhere except for on ad games. It's $15 there. They're going to have the $5 ad games tax. Yep, got to add the out-of-game text. Anyway, two tables. So you're getting Adventures of Lara Croft, I think that's what it's called, and then Croft Manor, which takes place at her home. And here's what I, my initial reaction to these was that, I was like, really? The manner? The only thing you did in the game was your tutorial, your training ground of how you'd run around. I was like, how's that going to be interesting? And then the adventures, I was like, oh, here's where we're going to do a proper thing. But then I look at the playfield and I look at everything that's on there. So we have a 3D Laura on the table, on both of them. And it is very much modeled after the Lara that is in the current video, the trilogy. The Crystal Dynamics version of the game. Well, sorry, the modern Crystal Dynamics. I was going to say, Crystal Dynamics did pretty much all of them. Crystal Dynamics all the way down the tree. Tomb Raider, Rise of Tomb Raider, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. That's basically what she's modeled after and looking like. And they've nailed the model perfectly. It's a really good representation of the game, of the model, the current model. But then the tables themselves are based off of the old PS1, PS2 games. Like, the characters, the iconography that's there, the music that's in it. I'm like, that ain't off of this new stuff, that's off the very old stuff. um so it's this weird uh blending of of eras yeah yeah and i'm and i'm and you know i'm not even like you're really into tomb raider you love the franchise yeah i love it i played it on play at psp kind of frustrated the living bejeebers out of me and yep and i just went nope nope but you i have a tomb raider 2 strategy guide yes i do Yes you do Because you needed one Oh my God you did Because it the only way you can pass the game otherwise Dude some of those puzzles were so diabolical Yeah. And it was just like literally, I remember there was one room, I was, because, okay, flashback, old school, old school Tomb Raider. Everything was blocks. Yes. yeah you met i mean like you could measure everything was measurement if you want to hit a jump you step back twice and then you ran forward and on the second step you jumped and then that put you right at the edge of the block in order to clear you know whatever you need to do everything was very geometric in how you managed and i was looking for a trap door and i could not find it and it was in this big giant room and i pushed every single panel yes trying to find the answer to this stupid puzzle knowing full-on it's probably looking me right in the face and i'm just not seeing it and i honestly i don't remember what the solution was to that one i just remember being so angry that i'd spent like 45 minutes pushing on the walls yeah yeah um that's that's exactly my experience with tomb raider in the old in the old era and it was the reason why i hated it i love the premise yeah of the game but i really hated the execution of some of those bits the puzzles were so frustrating yeah the new version is and i i know i've talked about this text page out of uncharted um it's very linear uh the puzzles are tough but they're not even remotely impossible and it's much heavier on the action uh the the puzzle is how are you going to get past certain the lines enemies well no there's no lines that chase you down you know it's all enemy troops um but it's how are you going to get past them how are you going to survive because you need food and you need supplies and all that that that's the puzzles it's not so much about, okay, here's a wall of spinning plates, and you need to align them just perfectly in order to open this wall over here. Yeah. Anyway, so. The trauma is returning. So just on the initial look, immediately I'm like, oh, that's the Venice roof that I remember that. And, oh, yeah, there's that, you know, the snow cave. And, oh, yeah, there's, you know, and I'm seeing everything. But then there's modern Laura. I'm like, okay, that's interesting. Adventure starts off with two people talking, and I swear I went, oh no, it's the voices from AVP. No, it's not. It's not. But the first two sentences that come out of the entire game, I just go, bleh. And then those voices aren't, it's not at all like that. I'm gonna so I did some hastily recorded footage last night so should we watch some of this? yeah you wanna have a look? we're not gonna watch the whole thing I've already uploaded it folks so if you wanna check it out and you don't have the jump on to the Blackade channel and it's like 22 minutes what I do is I've got both the tables, you'll see but I do both the tables in the multiball mode because it's really fun, and the five-minute challenge mode, so you can sort of get an idea of the linear flow, plus also what it looks like in multiple. All right, so maybe we'll hear these god-awful voices that start the whole thing. Let's kick over there. Yeah, so the first one is when you start the game. I'll get it started, and we can have a little explore around. The thing I like is... Just right there, that music. If... Oh, I was saying the awe music, but... Yeah, the awe music, yeah. That was the menu music, wasn't it? Yeah! Yeah. Or, like, the pause music. But, like, it totally brought back memories. Yeah, even this music is like, yes, I'm fighting something, it's going to be fun. So, the way you play this mode, the multiple's really not difficult, but, like, the shot is basically the flashing red triangle. that's currently flashing into the globe. Kind of really like the way they've done the lock hole, which is the... Sorry, not the lock hole, the mission star hole. It's that big metal ramp scoop underneath the world. And it feels really satisfying to nail it. And it also... It's easy to shoot, but it also returns the ball in a predictable manner. Not safely. Like, sometimes the ball bounces a bit differently. You can't just shoot it back in. I just did it. Now, you'll hear me. I've got score multiplier power-up here, so this little bling, you'll hear me activate that every single time I shoot the jackpot. So that's really the strategy here, because you can double your score. I'll also point out that that little saucer does an interesting thing. It'll shoot in two different directions. One of the directions will fire it straight towards the left flipper. The other will fire it towards the upper left flipper. depending on where your hurry-up is that you need. Yes, and I really love the... So the mechanical nature of this table suggests to me that it could easily be recreated in real life if someone wanted to. Like, you could make this table... I don't recall there being a... In the time that I've played it, you're right, I don't think there's a single thing that is... There's no coupled pop-ups on it? No. No. No, there's some trap doors. But they're implementable right? There's a tilt field the only thing that would be that upper playfield on the right hand side There's a gun shootout. Yeah, that's really weird actually it is weird. I don't like it I don't understand how to do it. I need to actually read the instructions. I'll tell you how to do it It's you shoot. I had to read the instructions to figure it out out. Left flipper shoots to the left, because basically there's three targets that can pop up. Left, right, and middle. Left flipper shoots to the left, right flipper shoots to the right. Plunger button, button, not the plunger, but the button, fires in the middle. Wow, really? You couldn't just hold both flip buttons together? Which is fine if you're playing on a controller. If you're playing on a cabinet, it's a living nightmare. Yeah, that's horrible. It's terrible. Why not just both buttons together? That's what I thought. I was like, why not both buttons? Again, it's something that Zen designs for a controller. They need to start getting into designing for cabinet setups. They really do. With that in mind. Yeah. Yep, absolutely. Because the same thing happens with your ball saves. I mean, Magna saves. You've got to hit the plunge button, which is easy on a controller not easy on cabinets yes that's right so um so this is the the second playthrough of it we're doing a five minute challenge i've turned on the visual extras for the environmental effects really nice thing with version 1.3 is that they have implemented a feature request that i put in uh which is separately toggleable environmental and And in the case of Williams, the Williams Visual Extras. So you can have them on and off without having to go into the menu now. It's all just toggles. Really convenient. Really appreciate the studio putting that in. I know it wasn't just me asking for it, but I think I was the one who made the thread describing it, which got their attention, maybe. I'm going to point out this back glass. It's all right. It's not exciting. It's just kind of there. when we see the manor back glass, that one's terrible. It's the epitome of general boredom. The thing that I find about the Zen original tables is that it's different to the Belly Williams tables that have flashes and lights that go off and have a little light effect on it. And I know why they don't bother doing it, because they're not trying to emulate the arcade traction mode of the back glass firing off and flashing. but it leaves like they could have like you know the the uh the jungle around it like flashing or doing something that sort of makes the back glass a bit more engaging at the moment it's just like a trans light and that's i'm just talking about the picture that they selected oh really i find it just very generic and boring they could have actually put the tomb raider pinball up the top right to actually showcase laramore as well what's what's interesting is that the The back glass here is different than what's on the ad games. Oh, really? What do you get on that games? Ad games, you get the... It's the Zen... If you go onto Zen's website and how they advertise Jumerator Pinball, it's that logo. That's what the look is. Also, it's like the key art. Yeah, it is the key art. Yeah. Oh, interesting. So, looking at this table, though, if you take a look at it, basically, you've got one ramp that's on your left-hand side. It's not even an orbit, what I would call, on the left, because that just feeds the pop bumpers. Same thing with, you can shoot it from the right, and it just feeds the pop bumpers. It's never a true orbit. This game is very stop-and-go, not really a flow table at all. It's more about aim. Yeah, it is. I do appreciate that the main mode start, which is under the globe, is rather easy to hit because Lord knows we do not need Zen doing what they used to do, like on Tesla and V8, where it was A, an impossible shot, and B, you had to hit it like four times in a hurry up. Yeah, no, that's like, just give us that. Like, I'll show you here that I pretty much can, I think in one of the videos, I pretty much, like, it comes out, I smash it back in. It comes out, I smash it back in. So you can time it so you can really start a mode quickly. And with this game, of course, you'll discover this as you play, but you actually have to choose between starting a mode and lighting a timer-based lock as well from that mode. So if you want multiple, you've got to decide whether you do a mode or let it shoot the left loop to lock the ball, basically. I mean, there is that ramp on the right, which is only hit with the upper left flipper. Yeah, that's a multiple-fiery thing. Yeah, and then there's the tilt field, which if you've ever played Indiana Jones Pinball Adventure, you know exactly what that's all about. Except it works a bit weird, so don't think you can take those knowledge from the Path of Adventure into that. It works a bit differently. It's nicely integrated, though. I like how it's well-themed. And, I mean, yeah, it adds a little bit of a... And this literally pulls modes and things from Tomb Raiders 1 through 4 and Chronicles and Legends. I mean, there's a lot of Easter eggs in there for things you would like. That being said, if you go in and read the rules, you're going to go, what? Because it's mentioning all these funky names that I had no idea what those names were in reference to. And they're not listed on the table itself, so how am I supposed to know anything? So the rules are a bit frustrating. and yeah that upper mini playfield um thing where you're shooting i still honestly don't know what the hell i'm doing um like is it shoot everything or is it selective shooting i don't know i it's it's kind of a mess yeah it's weird it doesn't have a good connection like it doesn't like you're you're shooting left and you hear the ping of the target but it doesn't look like it knocks it down yeah there's a very big disparity between like the feedback you're getting from that upper playfield and what's actually happening, which is the thing that I'm having so much trouble understanding, I think. Now, because this game is so heavily rooted in those original Tomb Raider games, I wish that the Laura that was on there was more classic Laura. The more pixel-y, you know, that version. Because, now we're going to go over to here, which, okay, seriously, that back glass sucks. it's just the worst you know what's funny too both of them just say Tomb Raider they don't say what the actual name of the game is they don't say mana they just say Tomb Raider pinball which is kind of dumb yeah I didn't even realize that until you pointed it out and you're right but look at the cabinet the scroll work on the apron on the lockdown bar yeah Yeah. Yeah. As it lines itself up. There we go. And now I have a night and a clock as environmental effects. So me and Jared were having a laugh about this before we started the show, and that was talking about how I was like, well, how come we don't have Lara standing next to us? Yeah. Jared says that's, you know, apparently a big discussion on the Discord. Yeah, people are going, you know, I want the Lara, the full model Lara, and the full model original Black Rose. Well, as I was going to say, if I've got to be distracted, I'll take that distraction. That being said... If you have a look at the back rows, the original Black Rose on the back last week being preserved, yes she's you know wearing essentially a leotard i've never seen a pirate you didn't see somebody that looks like they just did the jane fonda workout what um yeah pretty much yeah and yes i know that's an older reference but it wasn't when black rose came out so look there's definitely uh you know the disney version of yeah the characters that read the full-size models. But you know, we get Cindy from Wild West Rampage in well, it's not in this particular pinball effects, but it's in the other one. In the other one. We've had Indiana Jones. He's standing right next to the table. So it's interesting their choices for when they who they choose to put next to it. That being said, you can get there's two different Lara statues that you can populate your room with. So, she can be in there. You just have to turn your head to the left and you'll see her, at least in my room. Yes. Yep. Very well clothed. Yes. You know? So, there's definitely a... It's interesting why they chose a knight here. I'd love to actually work out, like, ask Mel or someone why they had to go with a knight here and not a short Lara. Maybe they thought that there's just a little bit too much Lara and therefore we didn't want that. But then you go, well, Black Rose has... You know, Black Rose hanging off the rigging. Right. And then standing next to you and all that. Yeah. And the same with... Robbie the Robot. Yeah, so, I don't know. I don't know either. It's interesting. what the choice is made there. All right, so let's talk about this table a little bit. Yeah, yeah. This multiball mode is not telling you a thing about this table. I'm just going to tell you that much right now. This is a much more atmospheric table. Yeah, it is. You're really exploring the mansion. You're exploring the mansion. Now, strange things. The video screen in this when you start modes features old school Lara Yeah it does It actually has like Which again I was like no but I want that in the other table. Not in this one. And the reason why I say not in this one is because the modes that you complete are very much based off of the manner that you explore in Shadow of the Tomb Raider. So, this should be all modern Laura. The other one should be more, I'm not going to say 8-bit Laura, because she wasn't 8-bit, but 64-bit Laura. Yeah, that's right. It's one of those things where it's just aesthetically what I wish. I didn't need to see modern Laura in two of the games, especially when there are certain aspects of old Laura are featured. I wanted one that was retro, one that was modern. You can for sure bet that Crystal dynamics had a role oh 100 the license was definitely going no we don't want old school lower in there yeah yeah um this is like playing the game normally uh just like this is a five minute mode but it gives you a good indication of sort of like the vibe you get in it yeah it's very much like oh a little shoot around see what you can discover explore the the table and Honestly, I like the slower pace in the table. It actually shoots. The table shoots really well. It does. It flows quite nicely. There's a fireplace in the middle there. You shoot that fireplace three times. That's how you'll start a mode. And then that whole thing rotates. There's four different things that you can do. They line up with the compass points. They're not easy. No, they're really not. They're really challenging. They are really challenging. and there's other things you can do. There's other things you can do, like Winston, your Casey Butler, he'll go missing and then you have to go find him and then when you do find him, then a little cardboard pop-up pops up, he goes back and forth, and for some reason, whenever you hit him, he farts. He farts? And I don't remember if that's from the game or not. I don't know why he farts. I almost want to think that it is from the game, but I cannot not remember for the life of me. Yeah, me neither. Okay, that upper playfield, Jared, actually fun. It doesn't annoy me. It shoots well. I think the thing about the upper playfield there is it doesn't feel like an upper playfield. It feels like they've put another element of the table that they just couldn't fit on the table in the upper area. It's sort of like a very... There he goes. So that puzzle is from Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Oh, is it? Yep. Oh, okay. Yep. You're now battling the White Queen, which is a chess piece. You have to collect a chess piece or something up at that. And it's easy to get multiball, but it's a fun multiball. It is. It is. It's pretty easy. There's lots of shots you can shoot for. They're all accessible. Like the ramps feel good to shoot on this table. Yeah. yeah it's a really fun shooter I've got to say I sort of started on the first one more adventure style table but I think I'd go back to this one more so let's uh we can shut this down we're going to go back to our regular view yeah at first glance again I thought that I would like adventures more and then as soon as I started playing and I played on the on the AtGames cab first as soon as I started playing I so much more enjoyed Manor yeah it flows better it's more the ball goes places and accelerates and it just you can get into a rhythm it feels kinetic like there's a kineticism to it that makes it feel really good to play right whereas Adventures is very stop and start stop and start stop and start it's different between like the getaway and twilight zone like yeah in flow you know yeah that being said both of them are really fun like yes i don't think that one is so much better than the other or that one is a dog and the other one was just you know really great both of them are very enjoyable so it's a pack well worth purchasing um because it is going You exploit two different play styles, but it's also going to be entertaining the entire time. It's the right amount of challenge where it's got that, ah, I can do better next time. And so you just want more. It really does have that vibe. Yeah, I totally agree with you there, Chris. You want to just go back and see if he can get up to those four modes on the mana table. I haven't got it yet. I haven't either. I can complete two of the modes fairly easily. When I say easy enough, the other two modes are just like, oh my gosh, come on, can I please get past this, please? And you've actually got to complete the modes, so you can't just do the modes. You've got to pass them. I do like that in both of them, there's a way of increasing the time. Yeah. Which is nice. In both tables, yeah. I did that on the video if you go back and watch it folks there's a bit where I'm going for the lock ball shot and it gives you a 10 second timer to do it but then I accidentally shoot the motor hole and it gives you back your 10 seconds again which is like thank you it doesn't feel like those earlier Zen tables where you had to do it like your thing everything has to be done on the fly in a certain order with a limited time it's really it's it's a it's an understanding of what the like what to play the game what a player would experience and the other thing i like about it is particularly the adventure table custom callouts like extra ballers lit lara's saying extra balls lit and you know shoot the jackpots and these little touches the studio when they're planning out these games are getting better and better at thinking about voice call-outs that matter yeah um in these um new creations and i really am glad to see that as now almost like a table stakes design queue when they're writing these games and particularly on the lara table i really appreciate the clarity of shots like they've got nice big triangular shaped flashy lights that if they're lit you shoot them and it's the same on right They're not just blinking for the sake of blinking. They're actually guiding you. They're really guiding you. This is probably the strongest indication yet of a table that's designed like an old-school Bally Williams of the 90s. And this is why I think what contributes to making these tables feel good to play. Because the implicit instructions on what you need to do are laid out for you on the table. so i don't recall who the designer is in this but it's uh so uh crofts thomas crofts he did adventures and then dolby did uh manor yeah they're very nicely done yeah they are very very good now because we can you have all these platforms to play on but you only want to spend for one which platform do you go so here's my observation we know jared's only played on one platform um so i have played it on pc in landscape mode yeah and i was really just kind of like going oh yuck this is like right it was confusing especially the on adventures the uh the globe hole i couldn't tell what i was shooting into it was like what is like an area it wasn't like a hole yeah no so it was just kind of like what is that i don't know and then because everything is compressed uh the timing was very difficult on that upper uh mid flipper shot to the ramp oh it was just really difficult to get the timing right because it just feels like the ball appears there and yeah you gotta flip um and and and planning for it was just kind of difficult i didn't play manner in pc uh because that wasn't available to me at the time when i when i tried it up playing on the cabinet much much better timing can still be an issue but the layout of things makes you go okay i got a better sense of this um because you don't have that like you know keystone correction factor when you're playing on a flat screen yeah but also you just got that that entire space so yes the length of the table helps you time the ball and understand and and it makes it easier to aim at the shots and understand what's going on yeah i can get that and then i tried the vr version and oh holy crap does it reign supreme like yeah it's not even close people if you own a headset and you are only going to buy it in one version by the vr version just don't even hesitate it's the lighting is so much better in vr the the tilt field looks great everything just pops the dimension of the table pops laura moving around she does this wonderful thing where she you uh have her swan dive and again if you've played the tables or played the games before you know that that's a thing of her jumping off very high you know assassin's creeding before assassin's creed did it um but she climbs up onto the pin table onto the pinball table's ledge and jumps off the pinball tube machine she spawn dives off the edge and then climbs and then climbs back up and then has a headstand yes yes it's just like in the game it looks it's very cool very cool yep um and maybe that's why maybe that's why they chose not to give you a full size Lara. It's possible. They integrated her doing things in the game and they probably considered in hindsight that it was going to be a bit too much. But like you say Chris, you can still have her as a full size statue in that room. And look, would you entertain a little bit of speculation from me? Okay. Let's hear it. If you bring up the video view again, I've got it queued up to the end of the video. And I wanted to just introduced a little seed, planted a seed for you. So this is the wild card room. Yeah. That just got added. Yeah, so just take a look at the room. I go left here and I do a little walk around. What have we got? So I'm looking at space. There's a lot of space. There is a lot of space. Hmm. I wonder what other games could go in there. Well, isn't there a wild-colored category now in Pinball FX? Yeah. So, guess what? What? That drink machine's going. There's going to be a machine there. Yeah. So, I just wanted to point that out as a thing to say, yeah, I think we're going to see some more games in this wild-card room. Oh, 100% we will. and that wild card room might expand uh and grow and get another door and like just like the williams room did um make it a little bit bigger but uh no a lot of the other tables that i've played haven't like the jump between me playing on the cabinet and jumping into vr there's nice things about it in vr but it's not like it's you know the cab is fine too but this is a dramatic jump in terms of of visuals the the last time this has really happened to me was when i played plants versus zombies uh on on fx2 and played it in 3d on the tv and i went oh now it makes sense got it um this these two tables just pop something fierce in 3d feels to me that they were designed for vr first that honestly yeah they they really did make these for vr first and then all the other platforms benefited from the design but by far these are best experienced in vr so i mean i hate for us to be to these last couple of episodes like a vr show right we're just being vr homers um but yeah honestly it's it's so good even if all you do is buy just buy a headset and just start there yeah and and even if you just buy it for this i mean sure it's a lot of money to throw around chris but i have an idea for a show actually jared and please comment if you if this would interest uh you out there but uh deep diving into hey you've got x amount of dollars to spend would you spend it on vr would you spend it on the cabinet which and i'm not talking about a full vp i'm talking about the at games cabinet and the MetaQuest. Or the VR. Right? Which... Where's your bang for buck going to go? What is it you're looking at getting? Hmm. I think there's something there to explore and see, because there's pros and cons and everything. There are. Yeah, I don't know. I will say that playing these two tables for some reason made me feel very sad that we're never going to get Portal in VR. oh just imagine what portal i think portal would benefit so great from being in vr like it's a confusing table it is a confusing table and i think the vr would just sell it so well man um so it's really saddens me that's not gonna happen yeah yeah Yep. Such a shame. I don't know. Maybe if Zen, when they finally release this to other VR headsets, including Valve's, then Valve will be like, okay, fine, we'll play nice with you. I really hope so, because yeah. But, yeah, I'm really quite impressed with the tables, I've got to be honest. They're fun. They're a nice little two-pack. That's for sure. So enjoy, because who knows when the next pack is coming out. Yeah. I wonder if the next thing we're going to see is a bit more Williams, maybe. I think we're going to see some Williams coming up. That's what I guess. I suspect that they got pretty good sales figures from the last three pack they released. So I'm just speculating, but I think it was well-received. Yeah. based on the amount of people I see on the leaderboards as far as individual users. So there's a lot of players on that classic leaderboard and it's a lot of $10 whatever it is. So that's a promising sign honestly. We shall see. Fingers crossed. Alright. Well that is all of the show that we have for you today. Thank you once more for tuning in and enjoying our content. We enjoy making it so happy that you're able to watch it. Next time, who knows what we're going to be talking about because we never planned that far in advance. But again, maybe comment if that topic of which direction should you spend your dollar reduce on, if that's something that we should do a show on, let us know. But until next time, we're going to be talking about something that Jared is very passionate about. Stuff and things? alright folks until then bye bye see you later