Pro Bowling 2

Nights out bowling for some of us tend to always go the same way. The first game is fun, but then halfway through the second, lobbing a lead-heavy bowling ball down an alley gets a bit tedious. And then our arm starts to ache.

Dragging ourselves away from a drink and a chat to take a turn becomes a chore, and a sit down in the OutRun 2 cabinet in the nearby arcade suddenly seems much more preferable to carrying on.

You could just call us lazy, of course (certainly, you wouldn't be the first).

Bowling in game form is a completely different experience, however. The challenge is the same, boiling down to mastering the technique for strike after strike, and how to flatten the different formations of pins you're left with when that fails.

Fortunately, though, when you're just using one button you can try out as many tricks and techniques as you like. And that's without pulling your shoulder out of its socket or embarrassing yourself in front of the family in the next lane by tripping over your own bowling shoes.

Like the real game, Pro Bowling 2 has a definite knack to it, and once you've got your first few strikes, the trick is to keep replicating the same exact approach again and again. This, rightfully, isn't made easy and – again like the real thing – you'll have good runs and bad ones.

There are four aspects to each bowl. First, you stand your player in the position you want by moving left or right. You then have to judge how much spin to add to the ball – a delicate business. Bowling straight down the alley seldom rewards you with a strike and the trick is to arc the ball with a degree of spin.

Next, you set the power of the ball by stopping the appropriate gauge where you want it. The power bar can be experimented with a lot and sometimes a full-on power shot will get results, while at other times it's best to send a slow, carefully aligned shot down the lane.

Finally, you choose the direction of the shot by stopping a moving arrow in the right place. If you've put left spin on the ball, you'll therefore want to aim it right – unless you're a fan of the gutter, of course.

While hardly revolutionary, these controls are thankfully very precise and really a lot of fun to play around with. You always know you've make a mistake with the lining up before you let go of the ball, although, as in real-life bowling, there are also some surprises where you think you've messed up but come out of it doing quite well. That's the luck of the pin, as bowlers probably don't say.

As a result, the game feels less rigid and more enjoyable than the previous Pro Bowling. Tournaments against AI players, for instance, are genuinely addictive – although these players tend to alternate between playing like toddlers and scoring consecutive strikes.

Additionally, there's a neat Challenge mode where you're given certain formations of pins to knock down. If you like, you can watch a tutorial of how best to do it, which actually improves your overall game considerably.

Multiplayer, meanwhile, enables you to play the game against a friend via its pass-the-handset option. You get a straightforward battle game, or 'Strike or Die' where the first not to get a strike loses.

Pro Bowling 2 even has a bit of personality, which is good, as without it you'd just be seeing a disembodied hand and ball. You can create a player with unique stats and subsequently build them up throughout a tournament. They also offer their thoughts in between frames, which helps with the overall real-world illusion.

Visually it's decent looking, too, with the kind of graphics after each shot that you get in real bowling alleys, while the sound is reasonably accomplished, with the clunking sound effect of ball meeting pins pretty well recreated.

Which, all in all, means that with even more features than before, this is super addictive and tough to put down. Unlike a real bowling ball, then – our poor, fatigued arms are always pleased to put those down after a game.