My initial reaction is it’s Stern’s best game since AC/DC, giving it a slight edge over Metallica. But … I wouldn’t buy one as they’re built / programmed now, although I’m hoping that future fixes / mods let me change my mind. Here’s my pros and cons on the game.
Pros:
theme - - popular show, artwork nice [but not exceptional] and good use of sounds during selected modes, e.g. Winter Is Coming, Wall advances, etc.
playfield design - - the usual ramps and orbits, but also targets that you need to shoot [lock and virtual kickback] with some risk and others to avoid [thin standups] most of the time when not in multiball. As a “flow-preference” player, the game flows very well, but can and does feel just fine when you trap up, too.
combo feature - - nice to reward shot sequences in a big way.
shot value incrementing - - nice feature, makes for interesting strategies … if you could see the shots’ values, that is [see Cons].
I like the three-way superjackpot / wildfire / playfield multiplier shot, and bringing back the “S-U-P-E-R-J-A-C-K-P-O-T” effect [even though the values often aren’t nearly as high as a good combo].
full-color and changeable lighting - - it’s nice to have shots color-coded now, as with Kiss and ST.
Cons:
shot scoring [non-] display - - for many of your shots, you have no idea how many points you got, or what multiplier they had at the time
player score display - - in competition, not only can’t you see what your shot was worth, you can’t even see if you’re winning - - most of the time, there’s so much animation going on, nobody’s scores are displayed. Makes it hard to strategize when you don’t know how much you need. I’ve seen players play a whole minute or more longer than they probably needed to to win just because it was that long before any score at all appeared on the display. “Am I there yet?”
excessive LED flashing - - in broad daylight [Expo outer corridor], the game is fine, but in dark rooms [e.g. Jim’s Halloween party, perhaps the launch party], it’s really hard to see the ball when they’re flashing, and almost impossible to follow what’s going on in multiball with more intense flashing and more balls whizzing around.
House choice clarity - - ok, so for House X, focus on shots X, Y, Z. Fine, but what’s the relative worth and degree of difficulty? I noticed most of the casual players I’ve seen play it were confused or frustrated by the choice, having no clue what to do and fearing the other player’s choice would prove more lucrative.
I’m sure others have different opinions, but I mainly wanted to get my beefs about the score display out there for feedback. Can we please have something to show current status and shot value at all times? Like maybe have the right or left 10-20% of the display even during animations always show all players’ scores and the last shot value? It’s getting to a bit like the movies, too much SFX and oh, yes, where’s the plot?
Note - - all comments subject to change as I play the game further, when the opportunity presents itself [there are no GoTs near me now].
The flashing during winter is coming is absolutely headache inducing. If given the opportunity to play it again, I’d time it out every time. And you’re spot on with the score display, I think we talked about it a bit at the launch. It’s a problem with many DMD games in general but this one is far worse in its current form. Great game otherwise though, it’s a really fun shooter. I’m sure with a little more time the strategies will start to make themselves more apparent.
The Winter is Coming hurry up is annoying but I like that since it fits the theme well (when winter comes, you’re fu%$ed) but I can see some sorta epileptic situation being caused by that but hey, there’s a warning already on the machine
Can’t really time it out by just trapping. As of now you should either collect it if you think the shot is safe, or shoot the left orbit and throw it into the pop bumpers until it times out. I brought it up to Dwight that the hurry up was a little annoying, and he said “the winter is coming wizard mode is lucrative” which i didn’t see anyone get to.
House choice is probably somewhat akin to song choice in ACDC. Initially people might be confused as to why one choice is better than another, but gameplay experience will probably help smooth things out. To educate the masses, Keith will probably put up a video soon showing 10 Billion on ball one based on a house exploit
Then again, many people are still trying to figure out what song to switch to in ACDC to maximize the bonus song jackpot collect during multiball because they don’t have the album or tour order memorized.
If you have blackwater lit early, bringing a mode in is the only way you’ll get decent points. Wildfire shots at the battering ram increase the blackwater jackpots significantly and you can build them up during Wall. My point? I guess if you’re crisscrossing multiballs and bringing modes in then you’ll want to pull the trigger on the battering ram during Wall multiball as early as possible.
Edit: Your wildfire is cashed out when you start blackwater so it leaves little incentive at all to play blackwater at all unless you’ve built up wildfire first or have a mode.
After playing in a launch party and one night in league I have a few observations. First, I love the game. I’m gonna be buying a premium.
We are getting resets when the ball is supposed to be held by the sword lock but sneaks by for whatever reason.
The LED flashers will be coming out of my game when I get it. They are WAY too bright.
For house choices most players were starting with Stark, looping the center ramp then cashing in on the left orbit. I have found I like starting with Baratheon better. Build the value with the left orbit then shoot the dragon shot to go right into Battle for the Wall.
Another thing is the cash out of x’s with the button. Most everyone waits until they are draining to hit the button and get a small award, like 1.5M(or even zero if you have no x’s). Last night I was in a good MB and I looked up and every shot was at like 24x. So I hit the button and BOOM, scored like 42M points!
Lannister in single ball play is deadly, since it is all the stand ups and they are as deadly as they come. But if you can get Lannister with a MB it’s good. OR, if you can get Lannister + Greyjoy(or any of the houses that reward ramp shots) then great. So if you miss the ramps you are hitting stand ups and collecting good points, kinda like AC/DC Thunderstruck.
I had the same issue yesterday on a new machine located at Buffalo Billiards in Austin. I trapped the ball with the right flipper then when I tried to use the left flipper to select the battle the game reset.
Of course that happens on a ball 1 that was better than every game I played yesterday except one…
My understanding is that this was an issue with code before the most recent update. This was happening on the one I played in the UK, but the code update seemed to fix the problem.
For anyone that happens to still be on the old code, the crude fix for this is: let the timer run out while you continue playing out the ball that should be in the sword lock. The game will default to the first battle available, and no reset.
Anyone with any good early strategy on this game? I noticed that if I just try to focus on finishing modes then good things happen. That’s the simple way to put it I guess…
Greyjoy is cool. It makes finishing modes more difficult, but you start out with a sword lit at the right ramp and only need to finish 3 modes to get to HOTK. Also since you’re making more mode shots the modes are more lucrative as you truck along.
Wall multiball has extremely high value if you’re hitting multiple supers. With baratheon as the mode it’s even higher to an almost ludicrous extent.
It seems that another disadvantage of Greyjoy is that only one mode can be played at a time, which lowers the value of Blackwater multiball a bit.
So far I’ve had the most success so far picking Tyrell. Increasing the multipliers by the inlanes seems pretty valuable and the mode gets you points while building towards Blackwater multiball.
Yeah as of now, sadly the only time blackwater is useful is when you have a mode running. I’ve gone the other way and tried to build up wildfire during wall multiball and then start blackwater after that. The jackpot values are still too low. It’s probably in your best interest if you have an add-a-ball to save it for HOTK (or wall if you’re crushing it).
Does anyone know what the combo multipliers max out at as you’re collecting swords? Can’t recall if I’ve seen 6x combos without a pf multiplier.
