The Web was great when it came out. Biggest bummer was unlabeled inserts, but I guess you got used to it pretty quick. It was really the first video pinball with serious hardcore pinball rules.
It was BTFO by Timeshock, though, truly the pinnacle of the series. Timeshock honestly to me lacks in music and speech, but the rules are so good it’s hard to hate the game for those things. To me it seems impossible to “get” by casuals, but I have no evidence one way or the other. Really loved a lot of the more imaginative things they did like the souvenir matches which I thought was a really great rule.
BRUSA fell completely flat to me. It seemed hard, probably went more brutally hardcore rulewise than did Timeshock, didn’t shoot as well (to me), and just simply lacked fun. It was way too serious. A competent game, but one that I did not enjoy playing. I never got close to finishing it though I choose to believe I was probably the first one outside of Cunning to finish Timeshock.
FJ… This one seemed rushed to me or something. There’s lot of interesting (and hard) rules in the game (particularly the finishing bonuses for the adventure modes), but the basic geometry of the shots never worked for me that well. I did play it a fair amount, certainly more than BRUSA, and even within the last few years I dusted it off and had some goes on it. Fortunately, there’s finally a video of someone doing well on it on youtube, so I can rest easy knowing the end of the game now. I got pretty far in it, but don’t think I ever completed the first ? adventure mode. The color DMD was great and had promise but ultimately was vastly underutilized. The main diamond modes were pretty varied and generally quite good. The total polish just wasn’t totally there.
I guess I rank them thusly:
- Timeshock - by far the best
- Fantastic Journey - good, but not the best geometry
- The Web - fun, though exponential scoring and no insert text
- BRUSA - just not fun, way too geeked-out