To Those Considering a Purchase

Meh.

Its basically a port of the mobile game, with some expanded stuff.

But you can't change camera angles and it switches while the ball travels down the lane, which is jarring. Pin Physics don't feel realistic. An achievement isn't unlocking for me(Turkey specifically, so far). When you bowl an opponent, you can't skip their turn, you can occasionally skip the replays after their turn. You also can't fast forward past the replays and crowd panning. While it is fairly easy to throw the ball the same direction because of a point-the-arrow system, your bowler is blocking where you are lining up and so you have to judge where you are standing by the elbow or head, which is just weird. The hook system is based on how hard you push the stick to the right or left after release, so its difficult to be consistent, which, with an oil pattern is kind of key for those hoping for a bowling simulation.

Its a passable game, maybe something to build on. But these are a few notes I would've like to know when choosing to buy the game, as someone who has been hoping for an actual bowling game.

Howd you get it early?

I bought it from the Microsoft Store.

This game is pretty bad. I would recommend the mobile version over this. Painful to play and the AI seems to be godlike a few games into career mode.

Psymon said:Achievement-wise you have to place first in EVERYTHING so this is going to be a heck of a grind.

I would say any on the bowling games currently out on Xbox One are more enjoyable than this one.

The Turkey achievement isn’t unlocking which is annoying . It’s not a bad game , but I think I prefer Tekken Bowling overall . At least it’s reasonably priced and I’ve got a couple of hours fun out of it , but think it’s going to be a bit too much of a grind to unlock stuff.

loopingstar said:That didn't unlock for me when I would use a special ball for the 3rd strike. I'm not sure if it really has anything to do with that or if its just glitched, but I know for a fact my third strike was with a normal bowling ball and not the bomb ball, etc. When I was complaining about it not unlocking in the OP I had used the bomb ball to guarantee the 3rd strike.

Thanks Bonkekook , I suspected that might be the case. Will try and use a normal ball for the final throw .

Bonkekook said:That bad huh? Damn. Been wanting a good bowling game. Been hearing good and bad. I'm guessing by now you've probably played more. Do you still stand by your first impressions or has it grown on you?

Coojo78 said:At least in the mobile game, I could tell a difference in oil patterns. If you bowled in a different tournament, the ball reacted somewhat differently on long patterns versus short, etc. I don't want to reveal my secrets yet, but I've found a line hooking it that works the same on EVERY pattern. If you check my Xbox Captures you'll also see a number of glitches I've recorded while playing it.

Its just not the technical bowling game I was hoping for. And there's so much potential for a bowling career mode that we may never get.

I also have a hard time recommending it because of the paywall/microtransaction BS. Its no longer a free game. Those don't belong. Plus, the game regularly says "Having trouble getting past a tournament? Just buy a new ball!"

The little fun I've had with it isn't worth it, IMO. Curse the completionist in me.

Bonkekook said:The completionist in you is really going to hate these unobtainable challenges then. I know they make me sad, especially being connected to a 200G achievement :(

Hopefully they fix them. Will probably find more as I go along. I'm only about halfway through the game and found 2 glitched ones.

Thanks. Good to know. Might wait for a sale.

Is this like the mobile game in term of difficulty? I can't pass the pro-am challenge on the mobile app, you need to perform 210+ score to even have a chance to be first....if this game is like that, I'll pass. I like bowling games but don't want to be frustrated so soon into the game.

So Young said:Somewhat. They got rid of the frustrating energy so you can just keep playing and practicing, and the oil patterns don't really do anything, so if you find a line to the pocket you don't need to change much at all throughout the game. Once you get enough tickets or gold pins for one of the League Balls or better its pretty easy to consistently strike, especially when you learn how to throw all 3 specisl balls for strikes.

On the flip side, the pin physics are just weird. And you're going to need to average 250+ throughout most of the later tournaments to win.

However, you CAN abuse the autosave system. I haven't figured out exactly how it works, but generally it autosaves after a spare. Sometimes I would start a game with 5 in a row only to screw up. So I quit the game using the Xbox menu, start it up and resume the tourney, and sometimes it would make me restart the entire tournament and sometimes I could resume from frame 4 or 5.

It has fun in small doses but its still designed to frustrate you so you'll buy gold pins to help you.

Have you figured out how to leave a bucket yet? I've been trying probably for more than 10 hours but unlike real bowling leaving the bucket is extremely difficult to leave it due to the pin physics not being how they should be.

Psymon said:Just got to that one. I don't think I've left one since I was using the early balls so I've been trying different combinations of those. So far, I end up leaving a bucket with the 7 pin. I'll post if I figure out a solution.

I had no luck for 5 hours last night, but I would just treat it as a glitched one for now and move on. The devs have said that the oil patterns all being the same is a glitch and will be fixed in the next update, so if you've passed along the few challenges that you've found glitched, I think everything will be fixed with the next update.