RocketBowl
Score: 68% ESRB: Not Rated Publisher: Large Animal Games Developer: Large Animal Games Media: Download/1 Players: 1 Genre: Sports (Bowling)
Graphics & Sound: RocketBowl by Large Animal Games is not your typical PC game. To begin with, it’s not a game you’ll find in stores. Rather, you buy it directly through the Large Animal Games website. It’s not a game with high production values, so the graphics are not anything that will knock you off your feet. There’s nothing fancy here; the visuals of RocketBowl merely get the job done. Since the nature of the environments are outlandish to begin with, space bowling in God-knows-what locations, this lack of graphical power doesn’t hurt it as much as it might have hurt other types of games. Likewise, the sound effects never stray from the necessary sounds of balls rolling, pins being knocked down, and space objects flying overhead. As far as music, there’s only one song that plays during a course, and while it’s catchy enough, it’s still just one song.
Gameplay: RocketBowl is an extremely unique game, and the best way to describe it would be an odd mix of bowling and golf. When you first start the game, it seems like a fairly typical bowling game. However, when you go on to later courses with water hazards, putt-putt style ramps, and tubes, you’ll realize this is not your father’s bowling game. Likewise, the more expensive bowling balls feature things like curves, hooks, and the ability to boost left, right, and even up into the air. Each course has its own unique set of physics as well. In the early courses the pins will get knocked around pretty high and far, and it’s far easier to get some solid pin action to land strikes. Later on though, the pins just sort of fall straight to the ground, and it becomes very difficult to knock down any that your ball didn’t directly hit.
Difficulty: The pins aren’t the only things contributing to the game’s difficulty. The courses themselves will offer a far greater challenge. Thankfully, the game has an excellent learning curve, and by the time you have to deal with things like ensuring the ball curves just the right way to cross two narrow bridges over water to make it to the pins, you’ll be more than prepared. Additionally, while a real game of bowling only allows two throws per frame, in RocketBowl, you are allowed three tries to knock down all the pins. Though, you’ll still need to topple them all by the second throw to earn a spare.
Game Mechanics: You unlock new courses and tournaments by getting at least 140 points on previous courses and by winning tournaments. You can choose to play a course in free mode or by challenging the course champion and making a friendly wager. There are also large cash prizes to be won in tournaments, as well as special pins and coins on the courses that will also net you extra money. You can use this money to buy new bowling balls, but you must be careful to always have enough cash on hand to afford the entry fee for the next tournament. RocketBowl is not a game that claims to be the biggest and the best. It’s a budget title in every sense of the word. That doesn’t mean it’s not fun though. A casual game of RocketBowl is an excellent way to kill 15-30 minutes. However, even for $20, I would expect just a little bit more. You can find RocketBowl at the Large Animal Games home page here.
-Alucard, GameVortex Communications AKA Stephen Triche
Minimum System Requirements: None Available   Test System: Windows XP, P4 2.8 GHz, 1024MB RAM, Sound Blaster Audigy 2, Radeon 9800 PRO w/256MB of memory
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