AMF Xtreme Bowling for Prizes (Mobile)

CNET editors' rating: 2.5 stars OK
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Overall score: 5.9 (2.5 stars)
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Gamespot editors' review

• Reviewed by: Carrie Gouskos
• Reviewed on: 07/20/2005
• Updated on: 05/17/2006

Atlas' "for prizes" network traditionally takes established mobile games, bumps up the price a few bucks, throws in head-to-head competitions, and then offers prizes to daily and weekly winners. In the "for prizes" version of AMF Xtreme Bowling, however, some of the best aspects of the prizeless version have been dumbed down or removed completely. What you're left with is a bowling game that does everything well, except for the bowling aspect, which makes going after the prizes a tedious endeavor.

Even the Pomeranian wouldn't approve of the bowling in this game.

AMF Xtreme Bowling for Prizes, like many other games that are "for prizes," has two main competitive modes. "Head-to-head" is the daily tournament mode, where your standing is calculated based on your overall win/loss ratio against other players. When you play a head-to-head game, you put your one round of bowling against the one round of an opponent that the game automatically selects for you. This is simply a score face-off, which will be tallied once you're done. It's basically a combination of your actual pin score and how long it took you to complete the game. At the end of each day, the top four or five ranked players win prizes in the form of AMF bowling gift certificates. The weekly competition mode is called "progressive," and your task in it is to come up with the highest overall game. Again, the top five players win AMF bowling gift certificates, although it's unclear if they're for a different amount, even though the task is more demanding in the progressive mode.

Really, the setup is the best thing about this game, as the problem lies within the bowling itself. While AMF Xtreme Bowling was a fairly solid bowling simulator, this version is shoddy at best. You play by setting your starting point horizontally on the lane. Then you'll select the velocity with which you'll throw the ball, as well as the angle at which you'll throw it. Finally, you'll determine whether you want to spin it to the left or right or just keep it straight. The velocity and angle meters are simply sliding bars that you must stop in the appropriate location, although even when you've seemingly got everything set up, victory is not guaranteed. The most frustrating thing about the game is that the physics don't make much sense. On the rare occasion that you can pull off a move, such as knocking one pin into another, it's quite satisfying. But more often than not, you're left with questions about pin behavior. For example, any time a pin gets hit and doesn't immediately fall over--but instead spins around wildly--it always remains standing. It would have been much better if there were some random calculation that sometimes caused the pin to fall over and sometimes let it stay up. Otherwise, there's no point to the spinning except to serve as frustration. Also on occasion, the ball passes down the lane and comes in contact with a portion of the pin, but doesn't knock it over. It's moments like these that really undermine the bowling element of the game, which is unfortunate, because the game presents a nice package otherwise.

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