|Another King Pin Review


                       This time by Freak of NFA

Bowling,  what  can you say about it eh?  You pick up a ball and try and
knock  down  a  few  lumps of china, hardly the most active sport in the
world  is it?  These days it's a new trend to go out bowling with "a few
mates",  compare  scores  etc etc etc, and so Team 17 have released this
one perfectly timed.

Not  being  too  much of a fan of bowling meself but knowing the general
rules and whatnot, the computer (sim?) version naturally endeared itself
to  me  more than the actuall physical game.  It also works out cheaper,
as  King  Pin  sells  for £12.99 full price, but can be picked up for as
little as £7.99 mail order, so it's damned cheap.

You  can  look  upon the graphics in the game in one of two ways, either
they're  good or they're lacking.  The animation of the player - left or
right  handed,  male  or female - is pretty tasty, but the detail on the
player  is  pretty cack, especially considering this was (allegedly) the
AGA/ECS  version.   Similarly  the animation on the bar that removes the
fallen pins is cack, whereas the detail is pretty good.

The  animation  on  the actual pins is nice, it DOES look right, as does
the ball, but where's the collecting area for the returned balls?  Where
is the ramp to return them?

The  sound is excellent though, no doubt about it, Team 17 have done THE
business  here with a long looping background sample which will have you
wondering  if you did indeed hear the word "Sheffield", or whether it is
some  figment  of  your  imaginaton.  The ball on the lane sounds like a
ball  on  the  lane, the falling pins sound like falling pins, and voice
over  virtuoso Lynette Read  still sounds sexy enough to turn you into a
puddle of goo with just a few choice words.

Her  contributions  to the game range from "Will the owner of car..." to
"Will  the  party  from  Team 17 please go to reception" and my personal
favourite  "The  bars are now closed", to which the pin-toppling punters
display their extreme dissatisfaction and annoyance.

When you score a strike or a particularly difficult spare you get a nice
cheering  sample, and when you get a trible or higher this cheering goes
on  for  longer,  so  long  in fact that the more modest among you start
wanting to turn it off cos' it's embarrasing you.

There  are  two  downers  to  this  extravaganza,  the  first  being the
difficulty level.  Pex/QuI claims that anything over 100 is a good score
and  anything  over  140  is  VERY good, and then went on to score 240+!
Obviously  the  game  is  far  too  easy  and as such doesn't accurately
represent  the real thing, but then at 13 quid, who gives a monkies?  If
you want difficulty, you go play the real thing, right?

Another  bummer is the lack of a decent HD install.  Team 17 have indeed
provided  one  but you still need to boot from the original disk as they
claim  compatibility  problems with some hard disk configurations, never
stopped anybody  else  though...  Admittedly, booting from your original
disk  doesn't  kill the game, and all data is still loaded/saved to your
Hard Disks.

There are also a few bugs in the program that can cause you to curse out
loud  at  times:   The  "Read  Directory"  function  doesn't  seem to do
anything and you can't save a player over an existing file - for example
when  you want to change their default ball - and somethimes you can get
away  with the most outrageous things where the pins are concerned, like
being able to get the ball between two pins that are next to each other,
without touching either of them, or watching the ball pass right THROUGH
a pin, usually causing you to miss a strike/spare.

These  are  only  to  be  expected though, after all multiply collisions
between  infinitely-faceted  objects  are  hardly the most easy thing to
calculate  in  real-time  are they?  Overall what really matters is that
the  game  is a corker to play, and the good bits outweight the bad bits
more than sufficiently.

    Graphics           7/10    Detail could be better in places.
    Sound             10/10    Excellent - can't fault it!
    Playability        8/10    Ditto - damned playable, but...
    Lasting Appeal     7/10    Too easy to sustain interest for long.
    Value             10/10    Some day, all games will cost this much.

|Overall - 8½ / 10