Atlas' "for prizes" network traditionally takes established mobile games, bumps up the price a few bucks, throws in head-to-head competitions, and then offers prizes to daily and weekly winners. In the "for prizes" version of AMF Xtreme Bowling, however, some of the best aspects of the prizeless version have been dumbed down or removed completely. What you're left with is a bowling game that does everything well, except for the bowling aspect, which makes going after the prizes a tedious endeavor.
AMF Xtreme Bowling for Prizes, like many other games that are "for prizes," has two main competitive modes. "Head-to-head" is the daily tournament mode, where your standing is calculated based on your overall win/loss ratio against other players. When you play a head-to-head game, you put your one round of bowling against the one round of an opponent that the game automatically selects for you. This is simply a score face-off, which will be tallied once you're done. It's basically a combination of your actual pin score and how long it took you to complete the game. At the end of each day, the top four or five ranked players win prizes in the form of AMF bowling gift certificates. The weekly competition mode is called "progressive," and your task in it is to come up with the highest overall game. Again, the top five players win AMF bowling gift certificates, although it's unclear if they're for a different amount, even though the task is more demanding in the progressive mode.
Really, the setup is the best thing about this game, as the problem lies within the bowling itself. While AMF Xtreme Bowling was a fairly solid bowling simulator, this version is shoddy at best. You play by setting your starting point horizontally on the lane. Then you'll select the velocity with which you'll throw the ball, as well as the angle at which you'll throw it. Finally, you'll determine whether you want to spin it to the left or right or just keep it straight. The velocity and angle meters are simply sliding bars that you must stop in the appropriate location, although even when you've seemingly got everything set up, victory is not guaranteed. The most frustrating thing about the game is that the physics don't make much sense. On the rare occasion that you can pull off a move, such as knocking one pin into another, it's quite satisfying. But more often than not, you're left with questions about pin behavior. For example, any time a pin gets hit and doesn't immediately fall over--but instead spins around wildly--it always remains standing. It would have been much better if there were some random calculation that sometimes caused the pin to fall over and sometimes let it stay up. Otherwise, there's no point to the spinning except to serve as frustration. Also on occasion, the ball passes down the lane and comes in contact with a portion of the pin, but doesn't knock it over. It's moments like these that really undermine the bowling element of the game, which is unfortunate, because the game presents a nice package otherwise.
The graphics are pretty mediocre, especially in the moments leading up to the ball making contact with the pin. You have a first-person view of the lane, which involves some detailed lighting on the walls, but you have really poor construction of both the lane lines and the pins, the two most important features in bowling. This is especially bad if you choose the alternative lane theme "Xtreme," because it turns the whole thing into cosmic bowl, with neon lights and invisible lane lines. On the LG VX7000, the game should be running a little better, especially in the graphics that are most essential to gameplay. There's a little inset of your bowler, and you can choose your gender. But aside from picking the velocity through a meter in the inset, it serves merely to show reaction sequences, and not much else. It would have been nice if there was a little more interaction between the avatar and the actual bowling mechanic. The sound effects fare much better than the sound. The music is catchy, and the sounds of the ball rolling and hitting pins are sufficient for a bowling game.
AMF Xtreme Bowling for Prizes just doesn't present a good enough bowling game to get behind. Certainly the prizes are enticing, especially if you're a fan of bowling in reality and have AMF lanes nearby (given their reach, you almost certainly do), but it still feels like you have to suffer through the gameplay. And that does not a good game make.
