Game Reviews

Midnight Bowling

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Midnight Bowling

Do you think ten-pin bowling is sexy? The folks at Gameloft certainly do. Then again they seem to think that lots of leisure activities, including pool and poker, are sexy.

Populated by a selection of well scrubbed and toned characters who could have jumped off the pages of Vogue, Midnight Bowling continues to uphold the high level of presentation we've come to expect from the Midnight franchise.

It's certainly eye-catching, but bowling in three-inch heels and tiny crop tops? We've not seen that down our local Megabowl.

Of course, more important than the surface is how Midnight Bowling plays. The basic control method is straightforward. You move your hottie bowler left or right with your finger to line them up for a shot.

Then, if you're using the manual method, you flick your finger forward to release the bowl. You can add spin as it runs down the alley by moving your finger left or right.

Alternatively, you can use the accelerometer. Waving your handset forward throws the ball, whereas tilting left or right applies spins. Slightly confusingly, the best method is a hybrid: finger flick to bowl and then tilt to control the ball's direction (you have to go into options and change the spin's manual/sensor settings to do this).

Whichever method you find most comfortable, it's the couple of seconds of intuitive fun that occurs during each attempted strike that seals Midnight Bowling's current reputation as the best bowling experience on the App Store.

In fact, you could argue it's a bit easy as you quickly rack up regular scores past the 150-mark, but there's enough challenge to keep you pushing to get your highest high score, even when killing some minutes in the Arcade mode.

Still, there are some niggles and these are mainly attributable to the game's excessive polish. Beautifully-rendered alleys and 3D characters with their own unique animations and dialogue delay the start of each new game for a couple of seconds due to loading.

Then there's the situation where you can get a slight stutter once you've bowled into the skittles and the CPU is working out exactly where they all end up. You'll often see one last skittle spinning slowly around as presumably some sort of friction calculation is processed.

All that excessive polish does bring a slew of features and extras. There are six characters; four need to be unlocked, although only the default Lyle, sexy Rosse, and finale Brian are worth selecting.

Each has different Power, Precision and Rotation attributes but the spread between them isn't well defined. There are various bowls types and costumes to unlock too, which you can accomplish by playing the Arcade mode and gaining cash.

Then playing the Story mode - in which you have to beat five of the characters within some sort of a Happy Days-style plot - unlocks the locations. You can also play the up to four player hand-a-round party mode, or play solo or go up against a CPU opponent in arcade mode.

But where Midnight Bowling performs best is simply its ability to make you want to have just another go. Cool controls, pretty girls, beefcake guys, and high scores: what's not to like?

Midnight Bowling

Midnight Bowling is another shining example of the high quality entertainment Gameloft is bringing to the App Store
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Jon Jordan
Jon Jordan
A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon can turn his hand to anything except hand turning. He is editor-at-large at PG.biz which means he can arrive anywhere in the world, acting like a slightly confused uncle looking for the way out. He likes letters, cameras, imaginary numbers and legumes.