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Anime Bowling Babes |
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Developer: Glimmer Games Publisher: Glimmer Games Genre: Sports > Bowling Released: Jan 10, 2005 Players: 4 |
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PurchaseAnime Bowling Babes is a fairly simple bowling game with a few cute (and allegedly sexy) twists – the six contestants, Ayame, Mayuko, Sayaka, Erin, Shina, and Himeko are typical female anime cartoon characters each with her own motivation for participating in bowling tournaments.
Using the Tokamak physics engine, Anime Bowling Babes promises to be a decent bowling simulation, offering five alleys to play on, including a parking lot and a construction site with obstacles on the alley, or missing gutters. You get to choose from a multitude of options and customizations, such as neon-glow pins, or fancy bowling balls that you can unlock by beating the game. As far as I can tell, the collisions between the ball and the pins feel quite authentic.
Unfortunately, there are some pieces of the game that don’t quite
work out. The first thing you’ll notice is the music, the various pieces rank between “barely tolerable� and “very annoying�. There are exactly two sound effects in the game – the ball rolling down the alley, and the pins getting struck. They sound rather authentic, but audio feedback of some sort is sorely missing.
There is supposedly a very fierce rivalry between some of the girls, but they remain absolutely emotionless and mute throughout the tournament! In fact, they each share the same animation cycle that makes them resemble zombies while they’re looking down the bowling alley to examine the pins or scoreboard before taking their shots. The one other animation in the game, the girl taking the actual shot, is quite nice, but also stays the same for each and every contestant.
Anime Bowling Babes greets you with a huge language selection dialog at the beginning of the game, of which none but the two choices of English seem to work. The German setting changes the texts written on the “Ok� and “Select� buttons, but leaves the descriptions of the girls alone. The French setting does nothing, neither does the Spanish. Hopefully, this will be addressed in a patch.
The game offers some advanced options, such as full scene anti aliasing, and shaders. However, the shaders make the shiny balls look a little prettier, but seem to calculate the lighting incorrectly – it seems as if there’s a very bright light source behind the balls and pins, where none is apparent on the alley.
In my opinion, Anime Bowling Babes could use a lot of additional work; it tries to capture the cult/trash flair of console beat-em-ups, where each contestant in some kind of obscure tournament has their own personality and usually fairly weird reasons to fight. The various reasons the girls have according to their profiles are weird, all right, but without voices, personal animations, skills or “signature moves�, they appear as shallow as the graves they must have risen from to continually play their zombie animation loops.
Graphics: 7
The game looks good for an indie game, and it’s only the lack of varied animations, as well as the sub-optimal camera panning, that keeps me from awarding Anime Bowling Babes an 8 or 9 point score here. The game looks rather polished, but it doesn’t appear to be whole, as if some key graphic elements have been left out. The various bowling balls and pin designs to pick are usually simple, but good. Some look very cheap, such as the balls with the character portraits on them.
Sound: 5
Tacky! The music is awful, and the two authentic bowling alleys “Mega Bowl� and “Diner� constantly loop the two worst pieces.
Game Play: 5
The Game offers two input schemes, “Standard� and “TruBowl�, as well as two realism settings, “Arcade� and “Sim�. Standard input is very straightforward, you just need to click the mouse at the right time to align a swaying arrow with your target. TruBowl is a little more sophisticated, requiring you to move the mouse in the direction you want the ball to go. Unfortunately, the mouse pointer and bowling alley are not aligned, which means a lot of guessing may ensue. The only difference between the Sim and Arcade modes is that one allows you to input an additional spin vector. That’s it! You click the mouse a few times, then the next player clicks the mouse a few times, and so on. And oh, the computer opponents will always add spin to their balls, regardless of Sim or Arcade mode.
Value: 5
While the physics engine does a good deal of work to make the game appear worthwhile for the first couple of minutes, you’ll soon find out that there’s not even a victory/defeat type animation at the end of the excruciatingly monotonous tournaments. The character portraits are merely screen shots of the models, and all in all, you’ll regret paying twenty dollars for a game that offers so little.
Concept: 5
The idea of having anime characters compete in a bowling tournament is great! However, it is executed poorly and the game manages to negate most of its novelty value by being just plain boring to play.
Fun: 4
Anime Bowling Babes is not fun, because it fails to reward in any way. You’ll find yourself fast-forwarding through the long camera pans pushing the right mouse button, wondering: When will this be over? This could have been a game that’s great fun to play, especially with friends. Imagine bouncing Japanese school girls! Imagine rivalry, funny dialogue, special moves! Now, imagine: “Nope, not in this game�.
Overall: 5
This could have been a great game, but it appears to be unfinished and incomplete. The huge main menu with its countless options doesn’t cover up the fact that the game is very boring to play. For $20, you should treat you and your friends to a couple hours of fun at your local bowling alley instead.
By: Russell Carroll
Posted: Tuesday January 11, 2005
Posted: Tuesday January 11, 2005
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