Stern Pinball Arcade

After the latest patch update, the game is much better now. I'm very excited with this move, especially for those newer type of tables. It's very nice that they feature a better music in the newer table, something that I've always wanted. It made playing pinball more fun, almost like using a jukebox with themed songs. Compared to the same tables in TPA, it seems that some tables are looking brighter. But what interest me the most is the upcoming tables, which hopefully based on new tables. A fresh move from TPA classic tables. Hopefully the development is going to be solid and consistent.

Game is currently in an unplayable state and support is not replying to my emails. I have tried to refund my product but can't since FS is selling all the tables as "promotional products" Don't make the mistake of paying your money in to this until FS treats PC gamers with respect. This is a cash grab.

None of these games work. It show 15 hours of playtime on my account because I left the game in the main menu over night after leaving my computer in frustration. Now I can't refund it. This game should be removed from steam!

Since all the content in Stern Pinball Arcade is now available in The Pinball Arcade, I can't see much point in owning this package as a stand-alone product, unless you are only interested in Stern Pinball tables. That said, the game is excellent in it's own right; albeit with a sub-standard user interface. You get to own some of the latest and greatest real world pinball tables, which can only be a good thing. #UPDATE# I would now recommend owning this as a standalone product since most of the Bally/Williams tables are now in Pinball FX and there aren't any Stern tables in Pinball FX.

1. Terrible user interface 2. And when you launch the interface it puts your purchased table/s all the way at the bottom, making you scroll through all their locked purchasable tables first. 3. There's a bug where the interface starts to zoom in when you click the free Arnold table with your mouse. (and even though this bug has been known for months it's still not fixed!) And I'm not too sure about the physics in the tables either, just feels off somehow.

In the current state the game features two free tables and a lot of other Stern tables which can be bought for 10$ per table. Sadly it also contains a lot of bugs (even getting the game to play in fullscreen with native monitor resolution can be tricky) and an nearly unusable UI (at least unusable with a keyboard). In general SPA looks and feels like a bad console port. Maybe Farsight should have just added the Stern tables to their other Product (The Pinball Arcade) because unlike SPA, TPA actually works quiete good. However at the point of writing this review SPA is 'only' 1,5 months old so hopefully the bugs will be fixed soon.

I can't get past the loading screen. Core i7 @ 4Ghz and 16Gb RAM so should be able to run it. At least it didn't cost anything, shame as I wanted to play AC/DC

Hats off to Farsight. They managed to take their excellent pinball simulation and wrap it up in an interface that is somehow even worse than the abysmal front end they have for The Pinball Arcade. It's also more unstable and the lighting on the tables defaults to a horribly over exposed look. Still, once you manage to navigate your way through a menu created by some alien life form not used to the expectations of the average human and get the lighting setup to your liking, you will be able to play some excellent reproductions of real life Stern pinball tables. Like Pinball Arcade once you get to actually playing the tables, everything is great. You'll just have to wade through what may just be the most un-intuitive menu conceived in the modern era and maybe a few crashes to desktop a long the way. I'm not a big fan of Stern tables, though people seem to really like the AC/DC table. You aren't able to try out tables you haven't bought as you can in Pinball Arcade. The free table, Franke...

Stern should be ashamed of themselves for releasing this. Graphics are about 640X480 resolution - looks awful on a HD 1920 x 1080 screen. The UI is awful and it's got more bugs than a beehive. Even the free game is overpriced. Skip this one - save your money.

We going to see Cabinet Mode??? Wasted Money, Probs should of Research first only took years to come out