Reviewed: June 9, 2004
Reviewed by: Mark Smith

Publisher
Crave Entertainment

Developer
LAB Rats Games

Released: May 6, 2004
Genre: Sports
Players: 4
ESRB: Everyone

7
6
4
8
7.0

Supported Features:

While Strike Force Bowling offers up a wacky cast of bowlers and some unlikely bowling alleys all of this glitz cannot mask a respectable bowling game that lurks at the core of this title. It’s simple by design, accessible by young and old alike, and manages to present a challenge when played with humans or the computer-controlled pros.

The bowling alleys are all based around themes like Egypt, space, a pirate ship, a medieval castle, tropical island wharf, or even a conventional bowling alley. Each location has an alternate mode that you can unlock by winning games and playing through the various modes. These new modes are equally as inventive. The moon becomes Mars, the bowling alley goes into this cosmic neon bowling mode with glow-in-the-dark pins and a laser light show, just to name a few.

Game modes include practice, open bowling, tournament, challenge mode, and golf. Challenge mode presents you with various pin configurations and gives you limited attempts to knock them down with a single ball. Golf gives you three tries (par) to knock down multiple pins (often more than ten) in unique configurations. The fewer balls thrown, the better your score and shooting under par unlocks new alleys.

Bowling on the PS2 is much like playing golf on the PS2. You’re taking something that requires a substantial amount of physical coordination and reducing it to a few button presses on a controller. In this case, bowling is all about timing and hand-eye coordination and a little bit of setup. You don’t really need to know anything about bowling to play, but it will help if you know some basics.

To start off you can move your bowler sideways. Then you click the View button and aim the ball using the target line. This is the general direction the ball will travel if you throw it perfectly straight, spin not withstanding. Spin is noted on the ball icon and you can increase or decrease the amount of spin you put on the ball. This will create a lateral arc on the ball that you will have to experiment with and figure out over time.

With your bowler positioned, your spin set, and your target all lined up its time to throw the ball. This is a simple three-click system much like any golf game you may have played in the past ten years. You push once to start the top power meter moving to the right. The harder you throw the ball the more force you have to knock down the pins. The faster the ball moves the less time your spin will have to affect the ball. This means slower balls curve more.

Click a second time to set the power and the bottom accuracy meter starts to move back to the left at a speed determined by the power you set. Harder balls makes the bottom meter move quickly while a ball thrown at 60% will cause the accuracy meter to move more slowly. Your third click should be at the indicated mark for a perfectly thrown ball. Anything to the left or right of that mark will cause the ball to move in that direction.

All of these elements relate to one another, so if you have a tendency to miss-throw to the right you can increase your spin to the left or compensate by aiming to the left of the head pin. It all works quite nicely thanks to some great physics that are slightly exaggerated but accurate enough for consistent gameplay. There seems to be some gratuitous pin action physics that causes the pins to fly further than they normally would.

Strike Force Bowling supports up to four bowlers, either real, computer, or any combination of both. You can choose the difficulty of the AI ranging from moderately challenging to watching the computer bowl a near-perfect game. The multi-tiered tournament automatically increases the difficulty each tier.

The pirate ship alley slowly rocks back and forth and the cannons roll along the deck. The tropical island has a giant shipwreck offshore, seagulls fly overhead and sharks swim around in the water. The moon has a land rover driving around and Mars has a flying saucer that zooms by. But it’s more than just the environments; everything is designed around the theme including specialty balls like a pumpkin, globe, or coconut, and pins that range from toy rockets, stone idols, and chess bishops. Even the menus and tournament tree structures all take on a special look with fancy fonts on parchment or high-tech readouts.

The characters are creative and you’ll definitely want to change the models so you can watch them all perform. The alien has a nice shiny outfit and the skeleton is easily one of my favorites. R4D4, the robot, is also a nice touch (thanks for not suing Mr. Lucas), but the human players are rather boring. You can’t change their clothes and they seem very stereotypical from the elderly black man to the Japanese school girl, complete with uniform, to the trailer-trash bimbo with black leather pants and skin-tight top.

Animation is pretty good for the most part. It’s definitely not mo-capped so you can see some jerkiness when they approach the lane and throw the ball. They make all the right moves but it just doesn’t “flow”. It’s like keyframe animation with several frames missing between the keys. Once the ball starts moving you can easily see the spin as it takes hold and curves the ball. The pins go flying with realistic, and sometimes exaggerated results.

The camera is excellent with great angles during the action and some nice slow-motion replays. My only minor complaint is that the camera will often change between the power and the accuracy meter. This sudden shift can catch you off guard and screw up your final click. I’ve also had other bowlers, objects, or even shadows pass through my bottom meter messing up my final click.

There are plenty of special effects. Everything is shiny, sometimes almost too shiny. The polished floors, balls, and even pins all have a metallic or glassy sheen to them. It’s very cool but also distracting in a way. Other times the graphics are quite realistic like the coconut and pumpkin balls that look very organic.

The rest of the sound package is pretty much what you would expect to hear at any bowling alley anywhere in the world. There is the familiar subtle hum of the balling rolling on wood followed by the crash of pins. Each alley has plenty of atmospheric effects like birds chirping, waves crashing, computers whirring, and in the case of the conventional bowling alley, other bowlers bowling. You can even hear other bowlers taunting you on the moon and Mars alleys, which is the only occurrence of speech within the game.

Strike Force Bowling is a great family game, not only for gamers of all ages but for the entire family to gather around the PS2 and play together; something you simply don’t find in console games these days. You don't even need a multitap for more than two players. It’s highly addictive and just plain fun, which is why we play these games in the first place.