Delivering a
bowling ball in the direction of the pins should be harder than lining up the
shot. Really, what do you have to do other than pick a place to stand and then
figure out the direction to aim the bowling ball.
But that is the
area that High Velocity Bowling, for the PlayStation 3 and delivered from SCEA
on the PlayStation Network, struggles with the most. The reason is that the game
takes a lesson from Wii Sports (and the bowling portion of that title) and
relegates almost everything to the SIXAXIS controller – and that means moving.
You tilt the controller to line up your starting location on the boards, but if
you even twitch slightly before hitting the hot key to lock the location, then
you are likely to find yourself elsewhere on the starting boards. Once you have
your position locked, you then tilt the controller to line up the angle you wish
to bowl the ball. This, again, is very finicky.
Delivering, or
bowling, is handled much easier. You grip the controller, swing your arm back
(just as you would do if you had a real ball in your hand) and then swing it
forward. The release happens automatically. There is a power meter that shows
how much speed the ball carries down the lane. If right handed, you can hold
down the R2 button and apply spin. The more pressure you put on the R2 button,
the more spin you get. If left handed (and the game does allow you to choose for
each shot, if you so wish), you would hold down the L2 button.
And yes, you
will have to learn to put spin on the ball. Not just to have a better chance of
bowling strikes by angling the ball into the pins, but also because if you enter
the challenge mode, you will need to use it. The challenge mode is a way to
unlock new bowlers, new balls (with more spin potential) and new clothes for
your selected avatar. There are three challenges per level – head-to-head with a
potential unlockable bowler, then a three-game tourney and finally the pin
challenge. The first two are self explanatory, but the latter will start out
easy (just take out the pins on level 1) but when you hit the second level, you
have to start spinning a ball around an obstacle to hit the pin behind it –
without hitting the obstacle (an orange cone).
The game has
several modes of play, with the standard quick play option, the challenge mode
and then two modes where you can view objects (balls and trophies) won during
your career. There is even an online leaderboard.
High Velocity
Bowling is supported online and with multiplayer.
Graphically the
game does a nice job. The physics look good and the game runs well on an HDTV.
The characters are all different and their animations adequately convey their
personalities. The sound, however, is another matter. You can load songs onto
your PS3 hard drive and access them during the game, but that still means you
have to listen to the inane comments from the characters. Better to turn the
sound off and listen to music from another source – not that the music in the
game is bad (it ranges from cheesy lounge music to semi-rock riffs).
High Velocity
Bowling is a decent diversion, with a solid challenge, but when you compare the
fun factor to that of Wii Sports, this falters a bit. And the controls – for
lining up the shot – need to be seriously addressed.
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Gameplay: 6.8
The game controls
are miss and then hit – the SIXAXIS control scheme for lining up the shot is not
very well done, whereas the actually bowling motions are fine. You can hit the X
button to skip celebratory animations, but several times that locked the
position on the lane outside the gutter and there was seemingly no way to reset
that.
Graphics: 7.2
Decent animations
and character models and solid physics.
Sound: 7.0
If you have your own
music on the PS3 hard drive, then you can access it to play during this game.
The musical score for the title is not bad, but the voice acting is irritating.
Difficulty: Medium
Concept: 7.0
Some of the ideas
behind this, in relation to the way you move the SIXAXIS to deliver the ball,
are fine, but others need to be reworked to make it a bit more user friendly.
Multiplayer: 7.4
The NPCs are a
decent challenge but the game is more entertaining when playing against another
human opponent.
Overall: 6.8
The idea is there
and the graphical quality is solid, but the game misses on the setup to bowling
the ball. Fix that and this download will be a decent diversion.
