 
#60 (+15)
in Games |
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Arcade BowlingPosted in Sports on 30 Dec 2008 |
 Reviewed by Steve Litchfield |
   (7 votes, average: 3.71 out of 5)  Loading ... |
Editor’s rating:  
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You may recall the cut-down ‘bowling’ games sometimes installed in amusement arcades? Rather than knock down pins, the idea is to send the ball up a ramp and flying off the end, to land in a scoring cup. This is a fairly faithful emulation of the game, though in fairness it also emulates the original’s level of difficulty and frustration. Still, at least this way you don’t have to fork out for every single game!
Although somewhat minimalist, Arcade Bowling’s graphics get the job done, with flashing neon strip lights and smooth ball animation. Two different ‘pumping’ music soundtracks provide some atmosphere, plus appropriate sound effects. Ball control is with your finger, positioning each of your nine balls and then flicking upwards to provide direction and velocity. Innovatively, after launching each ball, you can tilt the iPhone to apply swerve. Finally, the score ‘buckets’ occasionally flash with a ‘5x’ bonus, giving extra incentive.
All of which sounds decent enough, but in practice there’s just not enough playability. Ball control is so incredibly finely tuned and movement so fast that there’s almost zero chance of you mastering the flick well enough to start hitting ‘100’s or to have time to swerve the ball in mid air, accelerometer-style. You end up flicking almost at random and wishing the game was over.
What could have saved such an average game would have been multi-player gameplay over the Internet, or even over Wi-Fi, but there’s nothing of the sort here, not even a worldwide high score table. The only choice is between a straight game (9 balls) and a ‘progressive’ game, in which you keep on bowling providing you hit the stated points targets.
Things weren’t even smooth on the settings dialog and high score registration screens, with the ‘Done’ buttons consistently refusing to accept finger taps reliably. Arcade Bowling isn’t the worst game on the iPhone platform, of course. Far from it. But it’s got a long, long way to go if it’s to rate among the greats.
