Metallica Monsters is a Premium-edition variant of John Borg’s acclaimed 2013 Metallica, dressed in a striking alternate art package built around the band’s monstrous mascots and grim iconography. The gameplay is the same revered design that made Metallica one of the best music pins ever made — a relentless, heavy table anchored by an electric-chair “Sparky” shot, a coffin captive ball, a snake, and the band’s pummeling catalog — but the Monsters artwork gives it a fierce, distinctive look.
The depth here is enormous. Hammering the center repeatedly starts Sparky Multiball, while alternating the snake and the in-line drops builds simultaneously toward Snake and Grave Marker multiballs. The marquee feature is Crank It Up, where you pick a song and chase its scoring — and the experts shoot the FUEL lane for 2X doubling before cashing out to push scores past 100 million. Lighting all the inserts under a shot (Chair, Snake, Grave) and then striking the captive ball locks that progress in for the rest of the game, the route toward the coveted End of the Line.
Borg’s gift for risk management runs throughout: backhand the grave targets from the left flipper to safely start multiball, and build Sparky Multiball first so its random drop-target hits feed progress toward the graveyard. Fast, brutal, and bottomless, Metallica Monsters is the same stone-cold classic in a fierce new skin — a headbanger’s dream that gives back exactly as much as the player puts in. Sad but true: you may never put it down.