Let's Go Bowling! Review

Say goodbye to those sweaty and frankly odd shoes they force you to wear at the bowling alley. Forgo the faint smell of greasy fries that lingers down the alleys, and wave off the embarrassment that floods your face as your bowling ball drops harmlessly into the gutter, time after time.

Not because Let's Go Bowling! offers a definitive alternative, however, but purely because most bowling alleys in the UK are about as attractive as a Chicago Rock at closing time. Stop going.

Having said that, Gameloft's latest rather smartly offers one or two things your local bowling alley manager might not be able to accommodate.

Of most note, however, is just how straightforward almost everything is. Managing to score a strike in Let's Go Bowling! is a touch easier than in real life, for instance, because Gameloft has managed to keep each and every action fairly succinct.

The act of bowling is split into four stages: choosing where to bowl from, dealing with the power behind it, then the direction and finally adding some spin as your ball shoots down the aisle.

It's the second stage that's perhaps the most important, with managing to get the power pitch perfect a case of hitting the '5' key as a gauge swings back and forth.

Mistiming this button press makes it a touch harder to determine the direction, the pace of the corresponding gauge stepping up a notch and making spin the only way to get your ball back on track.

Spin, in fact, can completely change the course of the ball and save shots that, in truth, really shouldn't be saved. But that doesn't make Let's Go Bowling! a pushover.

Indeed, the game's Career mode doesn't just set you up against a series of challengers - it also sets you a number of targets to hit, like winning the game by a set points difference, or scoring a set number of strikes.

There are also whole match-ups where even the aim of taking out all the skittles is thrown out of the window. Red skittles, for instance, sometimes have to be left standing.

Naturally, the whole campaign set-up gets harder as you move along, helping to extend Let's Go Bowling!'s shelf-life beyond the quick-fix play it's clearly been designed for.

Yet by also allowing one off matches that, in truth, are fairly easy, the game manages to appeal to both kingpins and gutter-ballers at the same time.

Even if play on the whole isn't the deepest, managing to replicate the cast of characters at your local bowling alley to that degree deserves some serious respect.