Tag: Peanuts Pinball Review

A Charlie Brown Christmas (Pinball FX Table Review)

A Charlie Brown Christmas
aka Charlie Brown
Pinball FX Debuting Pin
First Released December 7, 2023
Main Platform: Pinball FX
Switch Platform: Pinball FX
Designed by Zoltan “Pazo” Pataki
Stand Alone Release ($5.49)
The second floor you get to via a jump ramp that you activate by smacking Lucy’s booth. Making the ramp shot is SO satisfying. It also activates during the “collect snowflakes” mode.

I nearly had a cow when I found out Charlie Brown’s pitiful Christmas tree wasn’t a target you shoot. My father gave me one of those “I’m not mad, just disappointed” glares as he asked if I really wanted to shoot a sickly tree that nearly died from having a single bulb hung on it. Well, yea, Pops. It’s pinball! Hell, the ball itself should have been the bulb that killed the tree (maybe a magnetic target?), and then after you do that, have the table light various other targets representing the rest of the Peanuts Gang to perform their magic hand wave that heals the tree and turns it into a beautiful, fully-decorated Christmas tree. It’s so obvious and such a missed opportunity. You do decorate the tree in the wizard mode but, frankly, we couldn’t reach it even after twenty-five combined hours of playtime. It’s too much work for what is a fairly tough-shooting table. Charlie Brown is a very good table that comes just short of legendary, with fun angles and excellent scoring that make-up for relatively basic targets, some ho-hum modes, and some eye-popping shot requirements. The lack of pizazz I suppose is befitting of the Peanuts franchise, as is the hidden skillshot: the ball going straight from the plunger to the left outlane. That’s genuinely funny.

Signature Element – False Outlane: It seems like such a small thing, but the way Pazo implemented the right side of Charlie Brown’s rails is probably the most exciting aspect of the table. The O is the inlane that feeds the flippers. No explanation needed. The P is the outlane. You lose the ball, and there’s no kickbacks to be had for it. The twist is in the Y lane: a no-work-needed return to the plunger lane, at which point the ball is auto-plunged back onto the table. That’s right: you don’t even even have to light it. It’s always active, and it’s awesome. It makes the table’s defensive game every bit as thrilling as the offensive side. The only downer is that it’s an auto-plunge instead of a Bride of Pin⋅Bot-like multiple-skillshot generator. I think they probably intended that and cut it, possibly because it was too easy and threw the balance and pace off. I love the element in general so I can’t really complain that there isn’t more to it. I’d love to see Zen do more of this.

Be warned: this is actually one of the hardest shooters among new tables. The director saucer is one of Zen’s most deceptively difficult shots. Lucy’s booth is situated in a way that the ball will just barely clip the corner of it. Thus, what should be the simplest angle in the game is rendered the most challenging. Even more frustrating is that the ball must pass through a gate before reaching the saucer, and if it loses too much momentum it’ll roll-out to the mailbox orbit. This caused some major problems on Nintendo Switch (see below). It’s worth the challenge because the table has such a unique flow, but it’s also a shockingly hard table to clock. The bat flipper is especially difficult, as there’s two possible lanes to hit with it, but aiming at them is quite hard since you can’t really see what you’re shooting. None of us got a feel for it. It’s pretty clunky and likely the main reason why this is the rare table that mostly scored GREAT ratings without anyone even thinking about going MASTERPIECE on it. With that said, we all had a good time and, yea, I could see where people might consider pulling this pin out during the holiday season.

Persistent Problem – Shot Requirements: When you read our Pinball FX reviews, you’re going to hear us complain a lot about grinding and ridiculous shot requirements. I imagine Zen’s designers will tune out really quick, so I wanted to put this in the first review alphabetically. To reach the wizard mode in A Charlie Brown Christmas, you have to play every mode once (win or lose), activate Lucy’s multiball, start all three “design and play” modes, and start the two ball “decorate Snoopy’s house” multiball, which specifically requires you to score five different jackpots to earn its check mark. Activating that mode by itself requires you to repeatedly shoot the target pictured here, which is far and away the most high-risk target on the table. One of the main modes is also shooting the dog dish about four or five shots too many than reasonable. The amount of work your tables expect, WITHOUT failing is so beyond reasonable that I wouldn’t be shocked if only a couple dozen people ever reach the wizard outside of the practice. The problem is, seemingly no consideration is made for how high risk the targets are. Designers just place a target wherever there’s room, bump up the requirement on it until it becomes boring, and then move on to the next table. Another example of bonkers requirement: a twenty-five hit combo is what earns you an extra ball. Twenty-five. WHAT THE ACTUAL F*CK IS WRONG WITH YOU DESIGNERS? It’s Charlie Brown, for Christ’s sake! You can’t even drop this batsh*t mind-numbing grind for a Charlie Brown Christmas-themed table? You have all the talent in the world, and you squander it by turning your fun designs into mind-numbing slogs. There are multiple Pinball FX and Pinball M tables we should be holding up as triumphs of modern pinball, and instead we hold up only a fraction of that because of the rules, not the tables themselves. You are the one who is both building the Porsche and puncturing the tires. I don’t think any of you suck at designing pinball. That’s why it hurts that the tables aren’t as good as they can be. Because you’re so much better at this than the actual final product suggests.

Special Consideration – Nintendo Switch: On the Switch build of Charlie Brown, the Grinch is the director’s chair shot, and it steals Christmas. Even high-speed direct shots right down the middle of the director’s chair target stop and miss after passing under the metal gate. There’s just too much resistance on that gate, as if it’s grabbing the ball by a tail and yoinking it away from the target. It’s weird. Since that shot is the mode start, it’s pretty ruinous. This culminated in a game where Oscar hit the director’s chair shot over a dozen times before it finally registered and started a mode. For this reason, and this reason only, we have to consider A Charlie Brown Christmas on Switch to be ⚠OUT OF ORDER⚠ for the time being, but if they fix this one thing, it should easily cruise to a Certificate of Excellence.
Cathy: GREAT (4 out of 5)
Angela: GREAT
Oscar: GREAT
Jordi: GREAT
Dash: GREAT
Sasha: GREAT
Dave: Projected to be GREAT on Switch after fix.
Elias: Projected to be GOOD (3 out of 5) on Switch after fix.
Primary Pinball FX Scoring Average: 4.0 📜CERTIFIED EXCELLENT📜
Switch Scoring Average: ⚠OUT OF ORDER⚠
Some review copies were provided in this review, others were paid for.