Over the years, I have tried out some bowling games for Android. Some were okay. A lot of them are not so good. I felt I needed a bowling game with a little more flare. I found it.
PBA Bowling Challenge comes from the developers at Concrete Software, Inc. They have made a slew of games for Android, but PBA Challenge is the only I have tried so far. Right off the bat, the graphics are pretty fantastic. Crisp, clean, 3D-like graphics, with the authentic sounds of a bowling ball rolling down the lane and running into pins. The game is quite easy to play. Nothing too technical, simply roll the ball down the lane with one swipe of the finger. You will want to first position your ball that suits your hook abilities. Once you have found that postion. swipe your finger up and the ball roll down the lane. You then tilt your device which ever direction you want it to hook. Of course you will want to choose the right ball, and there are many to choose from. Some with more power, and some with more hook. At first, though, you will only be able to use a select few, since in career mode you will have to win tournaments to achieve a growing cash stack to purchase more balls. There are also “special” balls that require time to “power-up” before you can use them. You got an energy ball that increases your chances of a strike, a split ball that once you tap the screen, it splits into two balls for those nasty splits that can occur, and finally, a bomb ball which just explodes once it hits a single pin. You will always get a strike with it.
Career mode is loads of fun. There is roughly about seventy tournaments to make your way through. Each time you want to buy into a tournament, you will buy in with your energy. You have an energy bar that increases as you play that is located on the top of the screen. So one of the downsides is that if you do not have enough energy to buy into the next game, you will have to wait until it charges up. There are some ways around this though. You can either purchase pins to convert into energy, or try to buy a ball that gives you energy boosts with each roll. Other than that, you will have to wait to bowl in a tournament, in which the game will notify you when your energy is full. At least it does that. As you go through career mode, you will also unlock professional bowlers, as well as different bowling alleys.
Overall, I love this game. I would say my only complaint is that you have to wait for the energy to recharge, unless I want to actually purchase some pins to do so. It is not tht much of a problem though. I feel it just means you will end playing the game longer, and there is a kind of an excitement when you receive a notification that it is time to bowl. It is the little things people. The game is free in the Play Store, so you really got nothing to lose. Check out my video review below, and let us know if you downloaded it.
