Brunswick Pro Bowling

"Brunswick Pro Bowling - A Lot of Open Frames"

In the world of gaming there are games and there are simulations. There is also a middle ground that is far from a simulation but really captures the essence of something. Some baseball games are like this. Brunswick Pro Bowling for the Wii is none of the above.

In fairness, bowling is a very dull sport. The game is fun as heck but it is one of the least exciting sports in the world. The fans are dull, the environment is dull, the players generally are void of charisma except in the fact that viewers envy them for being so good at a fun and challenging game. I have scored this game with all of this in mind.

GRAPHICS: 5

Again, how graphically impressive can a game of bowling be? The potential would be much greater if this were an over the top representation of bowling with explosions and lightning bolts but it is clear that the developers were looking for realism. Did they accomplish this? I suppose so, but there isn't much to see. The different bowling alleys are decorated differently but there aren't many of them and they are appropriately rather dull. The lanes look really good and so do the balls and pins but everything else is completely unremarkable.

SOUND: 4

The sound effects themselves are very realistic but the music, while not so bad that my ears were bleeding, was monotonous and void of variation. The good news is that it is easy to mentally zone it out and ignore it. I give it a 4 for clearly putting very little effort into this aspect of the game.

GAMEPLAY: 3

First we have the controls. Terrible. I have seen countless discussions as to how to throw a straight ball, none of those listed techniques worked for me and I finally figured it out on my own: hold the controller backwards. When you are holding the controller in front of you, the face should be down and the B button should be facing towards you. This is NOT how the game was intended to be played. Holding it properly resulted in a lot of randomness for me. No matter how consistently I delivered identical throws, I would never know where the ball would go.

The worst part is that real bowling isn't played by throwing a straight ball. Not by the pros anyway. Throwing from the right and hooking into the slot is difficult to impossible to reproduce on a consistent basis. Does mean the game is difficult? No, it just means that the swing mechanics are flawed. Twisting your wrist does nothing, when you release the ball has little effect and throwing from the far left or right forces a hook no matter how straight you throw the ball.

I must say that the physics are excellent. How the pins behave to the ball striking them is very accurate.

There are also no variations to the game. No mini games, no special practice modes, nothing. You have league nights which are nothing more than you playing three games against some random bowler and you have your occasional tournaments which for the most part are all the same. This makes career mode extremely boring. You earn money to buy new gear and clothing which will improve your stats but you only really earn money from tournaments. If you lose these tournaments early, you are out of luck for a long time before you get a shot at earning money again.

I recommend that you pass on this game. Don't even rent it. Hopefully a better bowling game will come out for the Wii.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 10/01/07

Game Release: Brunswick Pro Bowling (US, 08/28/07)