I Played Galactic Tank Force Pinball...

Cary Hardy·video·20m 34s·analyzed·Apr 4, 2023

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.027

TL;DR

GTF has serious 3D print quality and mechanical issues; negative TPF experience likely skewed by show conditions.

Summary

Cary Hardy provides a detailed critical review of Galactic Tank Force pinball after playing it at Texas Pinball Festival, focusing on poor 3D print quality of the tank/robot mechanism, weak trailer marketing, inconsistent flipper mechanics, air ball issues from overtight front targets, and audio system clipping problems. He contextualizes his negative experience as environment-dependent and expects better impressions once he plays in a home setting or arcade venue.

Key Claims

American Pinball deliberately cut tank/robot footage from the GTF launch trailer, likely due to poor 3D print quality
medium confidence · Hardy speculates based on his observation that the trailer is unusually heavy on screen footage vs. playfield footage, and his later discovery that the 3D printing quality is poor. He notes this is speculation but his interpretation of an NDA agreement he signed.
All three GTF machines at TPF played differently, with weak flipper power and lazy pop bumper response
high confidence · Hardy directly experienced playing three different machines and describes specific inconsistencies: 'the ball was pretty damn lazy in the pop bumper area... flipper power was definitely inconsistent'
American Pinball lowered all four cabinet legs fully to ground to hide air ball issues caused by coil power being too strong
medium confidence · Hardy theorizes this based on observing low legs on Saturday and later learning about air ball problems from bent front targets. He believes this was a workaround rather than a 'home environment' explanation.
The 3D print quality on GTF's tank and robot is poor and would only look acceptable to players who haven't seen other manufacturers' work
high confidence · Hardy directly states: 'The only way that the print quality on GTF looks good is if you've never seen any other manufacturer's moldings.' He also notes Deep Root Pinball's 3D printing is superior.
Front tank targets were bending backwards and causing air balls that dimpled playfields at TPF
high confidence · Hardy describes witnessing the issue: 'we were getting issues with the front tank targets. They were getting hit so hard that they were bending back and then eventually those were causing major air balls'

Notable Quotes

“I mean, it's pretty bad when Deep Root Pinball is able to one-up you on something.”
Cary Hardy@ 6:41 — Damaging comparison to a manufacturer widely viewed as failed; Deep Root's superior 3D printing quality highlights GTF's manufacturing failures
“This is prototype quality. And I'm not just talking shit here.”
Cary Hardy@ 8:21 — Direct statement that the game feels unfinished despite being released; indicates quality control failure
“The only way that the print quality on GTF looks good is if you've never seen any other manufacturer's moldings.”
Cary Hardy@ 8:51 — Harsh verdict on 3D printing quality; suggests the work is amateurish or below industry standard
“I mean, can we improve the 3D print quality? We're also going to be having lunch boxes. Fuck it.”
Cary Hardy@ 8:12 — Sarcastic frustration at American Pinball prioritizing cosmetic features (lunch boxes, Franchi backglass) over fixing core manufacturing problems
“why that wasn't fixed during the development process of this game i don't know i feel like that's definitely something that should have been picked up during the prototype phase”
Cary Hardy@ 14:12 — Questions American Pinball's testing and QA process; suggests air ball issues should have been caught in prototyping
“Every one of you guys there were like, beautiful. I love it. Mass produce it. Hit print, walk away.”
Cary Hardy@ 7:07 — Criticism of American Pinball team's lack of critical feedback on 3D print quality during development

Entities

Cary Hardyperson American Pinballcompany Galactic Tank Forcegame Deep Root Pinballcompany Texas Pinball FestivaleventJeffpersonChristopher Franchiperson

Signals

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sentiment_shift: GTF received better feedback at MGC show than at TPF, suggesting environment/show conditions heavily impact initial player perception and reliability testing.
medium · Hardy notes 'a lot of good things about the game at this last weekend with MGC, a lot better experiences that people have had compared to the experiences that people had at Texas Pinball Festival'
?
competitive_signal: GTF differentiates through unique campy alternate-universe theme mixing incongruous elements (chickens, cows, ice cream, tanks, aliens). Positions as 'breath of fresh air' vs. recent releases.
high · Hardy notes 'no other game...within the last five or six weeks has looked or played anything like this game' and theme intentionally embraces silliness
?
design_philosophy: Front tank targets positioned too close to flippers, limiting reaction time for aimed shots up the middle. Playfield legs set to ground at show, possibly to hide mechanical issues.
high · Hardy describes playing three machines with inconsistent flipper power and difficult ramp shots; theorizes lowered legs were workaround for air ball problem
$
market_signal: Launch trailer heavily weighted toward screen footage vs. playfield footage; lacks demonstration of moving tank/robot mechanism. Possible deliberate editorial choice to hide 3D print quality issues.
medium · Hardy notes trailer is atypical (50/50 screen/playfield instead of standard playfield emphasis); speculates American Pinball requested mech footage be cut due to quality concerns
?
personnel_signal: Jeff (Arcade Hollywood) filmed/edited launch trailer despite Hardy's expectation of higher-quality marketing given his typical work; raises questions about creative control or time constraints.

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.062

0:00

I'm finishing up the editing on this video that you are about to watch, guys, and it seems like I'm being, like, highly negative about this game, but it's merely that I just had a negative experience due to the show, so please keep that in mind. I'm hearing a lot of good things about the game at this last weekend with MGC, a lot better experiences that people have had compared to the experiences that people had at Texas Pinball Festival, so keep that in mind. hopefully things continue to get better on with the video i mean it's pretty bad when deep root pinball is able to one-up you on something in order for me to talk about this game i feel like i need to go back to a week before texas pinball festival the gtf trailer dropped on american pinball's youtube channel and my initial thoughts when seeing this trailer were that it looked very campy just like almost cringe worthy like oh this this looks bad but in a good way because i feel like it's pinball it shouldn't be too serious i mean if you take pinball to a serious level you get the godfather but anyways i feel like the trailer did not do what it was supposed to do Now, when you do a pinball trailer, you're supposed to get people excited about it. You're supposed to be showing off gameplay footage and what the game can do inside, mechanisms and stuff like that. And my overall impressions of going through this trailer, I've watched it many times, probably too many. I was like, man, I felt that the person that did this hadn't filmed a release to a pinball machine before. So I was like, okay, and I didn't want to do a video on it because Texas Pinball Festival was merely a few days away. So I knew that I was going to be playing it very soon. Not to mention Jeff at Arcade Hollywood said that he would be releasing a gameplay video shortly, like in the next day or so, showing off the game. So I was like, okay, well, the trailer didn't do it for me, but at least we'll have that to go by. And then TPF comes and I still haven't seen a gameplay video for this game yet. So I ended up talking to the American Pinball people when we're about to start doing the unboxing, asking about a gameplay video. And they said that that trailer was the video. I was in shock because at that point, I was like, there's got to be something wrong. I have seen the way Jeff films and edits when he's looking at a pinball machine and stuff like that. I know what he's capable of doing. so knowing that he did the editing and playing of this pinball machine and we got that as the trailer it wasn't making sense to me something was wrong i was like i what is going on here and not to mention the cuts on this trailer typically whenever you're showing off a pinball machine you're going to be showing a little bit of the on-screen display and a little bit of the gameplay and have it maybe even a 50-50 but most of the time you're going to be showing off more of what's under the glass than what's on the screen whereas on this trailer the amount of the on-screen display footage doubled the amount of footage of gameplay and that was odd to me so as we're unboxing this galactic tank force in my head i'm still pondering every once in a while of why the gameplay video that was shown to us, or the trailer, was filmed the way it was. I'm like, it's not making any sense. When I see it, it looks like there could have been a lot more to show. And especially during the unboxing, I realized that the top of the tank opened up, and something comes out of it like a jack-in-the-box of sorts. And I was like, why would this not be shown in the gameplay trailer video? Why would that not be shown? As of this time, I don't think very many of us knew that this had a moving component to it. going strictly by the pictures that they presented to us at release, you really didn't know how that mech worked. And that's something that should be pretty prominent in a launch trailer. But it wasn't there. But it wasn't until they allowed me to see the robot and how it came out of the tank where it really started to come together for me. I was like, oh. So, one of two things here, guys, of why this trailer was probably the way it was. This is all speculation. One, it simply just was not filmed and put into the video to show us what the machine can do with the tank and the coming up like that. That's a possibility. Is it likely? No. I doubt it very seriously. Like I said, I've seen what he can do with editing in any pinball trailer. Watch it. If there any moving mech involved you going to see it in action in a trailer We didn see that Which leads me to option number two And that means American Pinball requested that that mech portion of the video not be shown Now, why would that be? And that was my thing. Why would they not want this to be shown in their initial launch trailer? Unless something was wrong, or they were maybe possibly hiding something, or they weren't happy with how it looked or something like that. And that's when it was confirmed for me, for me, not by anybody else. It confirmed to me when I saw what this stuff looked like. So when they show the robot rising out of the tank, the quality of the 3D printing on this game is quite poor. So here's a little inside baseball, guys. When dealing with things like this, we need to sign an NDA. When I say we, I mean content creators. We signed an NDA basically acknowledging that we're not going to be revealing any of this footage or what we see or what we know about this game or whatever product that we're dealing with. And that the company that gave us the NDA will have the final say of whatever content we produce.

10:31

You're not going to mix that into anything else but possibly a pinball machine. I mean, and not only that, is that a lot of us, when we're playing a particular game, is that we're definitely comparing it to real life. You know, when it comes to whether it be attacking aliens or whatever, there's always things that are still considered like normal. Like, for instance, the new Foo Fighters were attacking aliens, but you're also going around United States to visit cities that we all know. Whereas this game takes place in another universe. Now, I don't know if the game lets you know this or not, but the only way I was aware of it is during the seminar, they specify that this game takes place in an alternate universe so things aren't going to make sense to us by just looking at it and hearing the storyline but in that universe it makes perfect sense and that's the way they got around dealing with the ridiculousness of what the story is is simply that it takes place in an alternate universe and they can do as they please let's talk about the mechanics of the game and this is going to be a little difficult for me to judge because I played three different machines at TPF, and all three of these machines played differently. Now, granted, due to the nature of it being a large show like this, some of this could possibly be due to power draw, although I doubt it because this was the only game that I'm aware of that suffered from any kind of possibility of it being a power issue. The ball was pretty damn lazy in the pop bumper area, and it seemed a little slow the flipper power was definitely inconsistent i found it even difficult to get it up the ramp i mean we're talking like just trying to get it up there and it just wouldn't make it i mean in one particular game my buddies and i we decided to make a game inside of this game by seeing who could make it up the ramp first and i was like this doesn't make any sense why they would have the flippers this week and stuff like this now this is also i think on saturday by the time I actually got around to playing the game. And I remember seeing that all the legs, all four of the legs were all the way down on the ground. And I remember asking, you know, the American pinball team, like, you know, why are the legs all the way down on the ground? And I was told that this was basically to give everyone the experience of a home environment. And I don't know about you, but none of my games have all the legs all the way down. And I don't know of anybody who plays their pinball machines with the legs all the way down. If you are somebody who plays with your pinball machines and the legs are all the way down, let me know in the comment section down below. I'm pretty sure none of you do. Now something else that became very well known, and it was also even pointed out in the trailer and some footage for GTF, and that was the fact that we were getting issues with the front tank targets. They were getting hit so hard that they were bending back and then eventually those were causing major air balls to the point to where they are flying over the flipper bats and this is why i think the whole line of home environment with the legs all the way down was probably a bunch of bullshit because i figure they lowered the coil power down they basically countered that by lowering the back end of the cabinet all the way down so you wouldn't need that much power to get up the ramp and i think they did this because they were getting a lot of air balls that were dimpling the hell out of the play fields so until they developed the fix that is currently now in place so if you bought a gtf going forward the improvements have been made hardware wise to where the targets should no longer bend backwards they have fixed that now why that wasn't fixed during the development process of this game i don't know i feel like that's definitely something that should have been picked up during the prototype phase and trying things out where you hit something hundreds if not thousands of times to figure out if it's going to be able to take a beating like a pinball machine should i mean are they not testing enough i mean what else is going to be found in the field that needs to be fixed in the future as of right now i think this is the only one but it definitely makes me wonder I mean and I'm aware that this happens there are games that get out even by a bigger manufacturer do I even need to bring up the rush pinball scoop issue and that's just one of a number of games that make it on the assembly line and they don't realize there's an issue with it so if this is the only issue that we're aware of then hopefully it's been fixed and everything should be good to go now So let talk about audio and I not gonna lie I like dubstep There was a portion of time probably about I don know eight years ago or so where primarily a lot of the music I listened to was in fact dubstep I mean even the intro to my channel is taken from a dubstep song now due to the nature of Texas Pinball Festival you really can't hear a lot of the call outs and sound effects and sometimes even the music inside that major area was a little difficult to hear so take everything i have to say with a grain of salt but there was definitely times on certain games like i said each one kind of played a little bit differently i don't think that the sound system in this game is up to par at least for a really loud convention center like TPF because I found that it seemed like I was hearing clipping whenever the tank would explode. It's like the speakers were cutting out because it couldn't handle the bass. But those speakers, I'll tell you right now, have some good treble to them. They got some tweets. They can reach the high-pitched sound effects that'll make your ears hurt because I also found on one of the games that the volume was so loud whenever you'd hit that spinner and the sound effect that goes along with that and other little bitty shots. I mean, I was cringing, had to get my head back because it was honestly hurting my ears. And I think that they just had the volume turned up on these games so loud so people could possibly hear them that things like that are a little harmful. So that was my experience with the audio.

16:58

Aside from the dubstep, you know, I think things need to be tinkered with or something needs to be upgraded or it could be just fine in a home environment. So now I'm going to talk about code and gameplay. and I had a lot of stuff scripted out for what I wanted to mention about my experience with the game and a lot of my thoughts and what needed to be changed or updated or whatever was completely thrown out the window whenever we got the recent stream that was done for the game and we've also got another stream coming up for it I believe this coming Tuesday with Dead Flip so a lot of the things and the stuff that I wanted to mention doesn't need to be mentioned anymore because after watching the stream, I feel like the code is definitely further along than what I originally thought it was. Now, when it comes to the gameplay, I really wish that I would have had a better experience. Due to the nature of the show and with the legs being all the way down in the ground, sadly, my personal experience with the gameplay was not a great one. I mean, I do see the little hints and resemblance of the old Bally Williams in this particular layout. I don't know if I like the tank targets being as close as they are to the flippers. I feel like those are just a little bit too close and that's something that's not going to change obviously. But I think a lot of the times when we're aiming for something up the middle on these games it's a little bit further back into the game giving us a little bit more time to prepare for the rebound. I'm hoping that here pretty soon when I go to pick up my Foo Fighters there may be one there for me to play and have a better experience without all the loud noises and distractions involved and maybe i'll change my mind on certain things but my experience at tpf with the game was not as good as i believe it could have been in a better environment definitely one of the things this game has going for it is that it's different no other game especially within the last five or six weeks has looked or played anything like this game. So if you're looking for a breath of fresh air, something that's just completely different from the usual or what you'd expect, then definitely GTF is more than likely right up your aisle. So in a nutshell, my personal experience with GTF was more on the poor side, but I believe a lot of that was due to the environment from which the game was presented to me and like that was my only option to be able to play it in that type of environment so that really affects my you know how i feel about the game i'm hoping that some local arcades around me are going to end up picking up one and then i'll be able to get a better experience on it hopefully but it looks like during the stream and we'll know for sure on jack danger stream coming up on how i really feel about this game because that way we'll be able to get a better idea and visual and all that kind of stuff on what this game is going to be like. So that's my thoughts and feelings on GTF. What are yours? Let me know in the comments section down below, guys. And until next time, peace out.