In the spirit of the recently ongoing Olympics, here’s a cute game called Track & Field that will put you in the game, when you can’t partake in the sports, yourself. I like running as much as the next self-professed runner, but I will never be referred to as an Olympian – not in this lifetime – nor will I ever participate in any televised events, with fans cheering in stadiums, while donning those ridiculously skintight shorts that long distance runners use, the wedgie ones barely covering their sinewy muscles.

Ruuunnnnn!!!!

No, I’m content to satisfy my Olympian urges with this game by Playman Sports, where I may select an avatar to participate in one of several events, including the 100m dash, the long jump, the 110m hurdles, the pole vault, and the javelin toss. You may select one of 12 characters as your avatar, the default being a duo of red-headed twins. I took a liking to the rather Germanic looking blonde with green beret, much in the same tough vein as Cammy from Street Fighter II. Oh, how I loved Cammy, in all her muscly, braided hair glory. For my character, I chose the Ukrainian flag, for no particular reason, other than I love saying the Ukraine, with a thick, horribly affected accent. If you don’t like the Ukraine (why wouldn’t you?!), don’t worry, there are plenty of other countries to choose.

Tap the numbers in order to jump better and faster.

After creating your carefully crafted avatar, you may go to the Challenge section as an Amateur, where you may participate in any of the aforementioned events; you must beat each event, and the final tournament, before you can unlock the Pro mode. I have yet to beat the Pro section – it’s quite difficult – but I assume the Survival Mode, as indicated by the tightly clad Eskimo on the main screen, will be unlocked for use as soon as I beat the Pro tournament. Multiplayer is available right away, should you want to take your hurdling, running, jumping and throwing skills to the global universe of Track & Field players, but as my readers know, I’m a lover of the single player. Though, I digress – multiplayer is awesome. Suddenly, instead of just one A.I. opponent, you now have four or five players running alongside you and jumping at different times. It’s pretty cool to watch, and I’m curious why the single player mode doesn’t offer you more opponents.

After you’ve selected your event – say, the long jump – I highly recommend you read through the instructions before participating. The game isn’t obviously intuitive the first time around, so the instructions give some much needed insight into what the orange and green buttons mean. “Buttons?” you may ask. For each event, you power your player forward, to hopeful victory, by tapping the orange buttons to start, and by tapping the green buttons as soon as they appear onscreen, then ending with a calculated press and release of two orange buttons to give your player the final surge of power to propel himself forward to the finish. The more quickly you react and tap to the green buttons, the better your player will perform – whether he’s running, or jumping, or otherwise. The use of the orange buttons can be trickier in some events than others – the pole vault, for example, took Ocie and I countless tries before we finally succeeded in figuring out that the orange buttons must be pushed at one, single moment, otherwise your character will fail miserably, hoisting himself a mere foot or two off the ground before haplessly falling, or just not making it into the air at all. Not exactly the Olympian feat we all admire. I believe it was I, who finally figured that as soon as your player begins moving the pole forward and down, you must then, and only then, press the orange buttons – despite their repeated glaring onscreen – to successfully vault yourself into the air, and over the high beam, to land down on the other side in triumph. Phew! What a workout that was.

Out of all the events, the pole vault and the long jump are the two most frustrating and difficult to master. You challenge different opponents, randomly, for each event, and you must conquer them in three rounds to successfully complete an event. If you’re lousy at the game (a little like me), then at least the game is enjoyable to watch, with its retro-stylized graphics that seem appropriate for a classic Nintendo. I always appreciate anything retro, anyway.

Definitely a fun game to pick up whenever the urge to compete strikes, with Track & Field you don’t have to worry about scraped knees or muddy shorts. Just make your player do all the dirty work and reap the applause, anyway.

Gridiron Football

The late, great Hunter S. Thompson wrote, “Football Season Is Over.” Nostalgia has set in and the Super Bowl was Sunday! Luckily, the next season starts March 5, 2010… for the players and coaches, that is: the rest of us will have to wait until September. Oi. Despite sports week ending last Friday, I think it’s time to take a look at a football app for the off-season. Could Gridiron Football be the app that tides you over?

Amid the plethora of Sports apps, especially Football-related apps, Gridiron, by David Hardenbrook, stands out. Not because it’s particularly flashy, slick or even great, but because it’s unique. It’s a turn-and-text-based strategy app that forces you to think methodically, like a coach rather than maniacally smudging the screen trying to make a play. It’s a lot to take in at first, but actually, despite the foreign look and feel, it’s very easy to pick up and play. I decided to jump in to a game after reading half way through the instructions.

Bombs away

There are two modes – Regular and “THE DRIVE!”. In the regular mode you can choose the length of the quarter, if you want to play another person or the computer, and whether you’re the Home or Away team. Once you start your game, the coin toss is automatically determined (randomly) and the winner chooses whether they kick or receive, etc.. The game is straight football. On offense you can choose which player you want to go to (two WRs, one TE, one Fullback, one Tailback and the QB – used for Quarterback sneaks). Each player has his strengths and weaknesses that you have to take into account when choosing the play. On the defensive side of the ball you can choose your formation and whether the defense is pass or run balanced – you can even drag your players around to customize the formation, which is pretty cool. In “THE DRIVE!” mode you get to basically run a 2 minute drill at the end of the 4th quarter and prove that you have the guts and arm of Peyton Manning Joe Montana.

I'm still catching my breath

Gridiron football claims to place focus on strategy in order to win. Well, that’s true, but what extent is it strategy and to what extent is it random? For three plays in a row I chose to throw deep into a zone with no defenders and all three times the pass was incomplete. Other times I ran into two linemen and gained 9 and 16 yards. I know it matters if the defense is pass or run focused, but this was just a little bit preposterous. Additionally, I found a pretty big glitch in the game: when customizing your defense, if you grab two players with two fingers and reposition them, new players are created. You can repeat this until every zone has two people in it. I don’t know if this makes a difference strategy-wise, because both times I did this the offense gained first down yardage, but it looks pretty intimidating!

And everyone thought the Patriots taping opponents was cheating!

Aside from this exploit the game is pretty solid. It runs fine (c’mon, there are no moving parts) and has enough variety to keep me playing for a while (unless I’m playing 15 minute quarters – WAY too long). It could use a few improvements: WiFi or Bluetooth multiplayer and the ability to flip the tight end would be good improvements. Also, a moving play clock would change the game a lot, and would allow for better use of time-outs (or use them at all). The ability to call a time out after viewing the setups could add complexity. And lastly: the game shouldn’t always show a brief tutorial when starting a new game, it’s very annoying.

If you’re looking for a different kind of Football game, one without the hitting and juking and injuries but with all of the intellectual stimuli that escape you on game day as you sit in your armchair with your beer cozy, Gridiron Football is the game for you.

Promotion Codes:

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*When using the promotion code to download for free, it’s on a first-come, first-served basis. Out of courtesy, please leave a comment below mentioning you’ve used the promotion code.

Sports Week was another exercise in challenging myself to foray into the unknown, to take a whiff of the wild side, gamble with that of which I have little to no inkling. In other words, it was fabulous. I like learning and trying new things, and Sport apps are no exception. My fellow Appstruck writers and myself experimented with all sorts of apps, and we settled upon the ones shown this past week not because they were the most well-known or popular, but because they were the ones that got the job done, in the best way, with the best bang for your buck. And, most of them are really entertaining.

So, I encourage you, check out the apps below if you want to do anything from tracking your favorite player’s stats, to playing golf, to testing your tackling abilities.

Action Bowling Free





SportsTap





Real Tennis 2009





CBS Sports Mobile





Air Hockey

Tiger Woods PGA Tour

Sports Illustrated





BackBreaker Football

O M G.

I never thought I’d say this, but I love this sports game. And, it’s a football game. I’ve reached a milestone here. Of course, let’s be reasonable here: it’s not a true football game, in the sense that a true football game would actually require you to play football. BackBreaker Football by Natural Motion does not do this. It’s just the backbreaking part, which I think, is my main attraction to football. This game effectively skips all the positioning, the strategy, the score keeping, the fumbling, and fuming by just having you play as one football player, carrying a ball, sprinting down field toward the goal while avoiding, with a hop, skip and jump, the opposing forces that sprint toward you. Like I said, it’s fun, if a little simple.

The game immediately sucked me in with its hip, rock music fairly typical of any football movie or game (*starts thinking of those gritty, grainy film textures with yellow filters for adding dimension and grungy personality to sports flicks*). It’s too bad the music gave way to lame emo music of the kind where a man yells in some unflattering and mundanely generic tune, for you and me to ignore. It’s not a big deal – the music goes away once you’re in the game. When starting the game, a nice 360 view is given of the entire stadium, with all the fans standing and cheering you on. The graphics are definitely good enough to keep me playing this game – I have no qualms about admitting my addiction and high expectations for aesthetic quality. The objective? Make your way to the endzone without being tackled. Well, that’s simple enough, only for each level of difficulty there are 60 waves of increasingly tough defenses to beat. Thankfully, there are a few ways you can really amp up your scores, whether it be through juking, spinning, or showboating (150, 250, and 100/sec points, respectively), or, if you’re really daring, you can do combos of any of the above. These really help if you’ve been tackled a few times in a row and see your scores plummet. I particularly like showboating – it’s practically a rite of passage for football players – but I try to save it for when I’m a few yards from the endzone. I think the fans might think you a wee bit too cocky if you strutted a silly dance in the middle of the football field. At least optimism is on your side.

The controls are incredibly easy to use – I wouldn’t change a thing. Tilt the iPhone forward to start your player running, and then turn the phone to the left and right to move him in those direction; otherwise, hold up the iPhone to slow his speed, or even come to a standstill. The two buttons immediately to your left and right, the ones with arrows, let you juke in the corresponding direction, and the buttons adjacent to these are your spinning buttons, once again, corresponding to the direction they’re in. To make your player sprint, hold down the sprint button mid-screen on the right. Watch out, though, he you turn slower when sprinting, making you more vulnerable to tackles, and you can’t double up points by simultaneously juking or spinning. On the opposite spectrum, the showboating button in mid-screen on the left, for you to slow down, open your arms, and show the fans just how much of a pompous ham you are. Oh, it’s all in good fun.

Now, it’s on to play the game. Should the regular game mode ever get tired, there are two additional modes of play, Challenge and Endurance, that challenge you in different ways, with different scores and bonuses (things like gold helmets and the like). When playing, your character runs so smoothly it’s just a pleasure to behold, and the game has no discernible choppiness when being tackled heavily by opposing forces. When you do get tackled, a loud grunt and clanging of plastic is heard – very well done, I might add. For your added delight, BackBreaker includes instant replays from various angles that go on interminably until you hit the “skip” button. I rather like this. It adds to the enjoyment factor.

Running, spinning, showboating and the rough tackle or two really make these game enjoyable to play. It becomes more and more challenging, and there are plenty of levels, so despite the exceedingly basic premise, BackBreaker somehow turned out to be a quality game, with much more life than I anticipated. I’ll be playing this one for awhile to come.

Touchdown!

Rawr!

Tiger Woods plays Golf?! You wouldn’t have a very good sense of his abilities if all you read were the tabloids – well, you wouldn’t have a good sense about his abilities outside of the bedroom. Now that I  got that out of the way (really, how can I ignore it?), let’s take a look at Tiger Woods PGA Tour for the iPhone/iPod Touch.

EA Sports should issue a declaimer: long-time fans of the now decade old franchise of Tiger Woods Golf may suffer a bout of nostalgia when playing this game – it feels and looks like Tiger Woods ’99, a game beloved by many me. Of course, I was 15 years old and hanging out with my ten-years-older brother and his friends, so my trip down nostalgia lane may be a bit more nostalgic than others’. The look and feel of this game are so like the original PlayStation version that it makes me wonder if they somehow ported the game over. That’s highly unlikely, I know, but I’m not kidding. Save for a few differences, improvements really, it’s remarkably similar. The graphics, the physics, the feel of the game are all so similar that it makes me wonder, at $4.99, how they ever charged $50!

Wait, this game is similar to one from Nineteen Hundred and Ninety Nine? That was a decade ago: last century, last millennium! It’s actually not that similar, it’s much better. To start off, I have to say I was really impressed when I played Real Tennis 2009 after Jackie reviewed it yesterday – the graphics and playability were top notch. The game is hard, but not in an annoying way; it’s hard in a way that makes you want to persevere, to even buy the full app. Tiger Woods PGA Tour, on the other hand, is a bit underwhelming. Don’t get me wrong, I played the hell out of this game for a month or so, but mostly because I love Golf. The game hits the intricacies of Golf right on the sweet spot. You can choose from multiple swing types (full, pitch, chip, punch and lob); you can put spin on the ball (top, back, side); you can shape your shots to draw or fade. Of course, the extent to which you can use these shots depends on your upgrades.

*brushes shoulders off*

You start the game as a novice and you must play rounds of golf to make money progress in order to purchase equipment upgrades for your game. There are upgrades for putting, recover and power, to name a few. Initially, it’s a challenge to stay on the course and earn money for upgrades and tournaments, but once you get over the initial hump the rest of the game is like a playing winter rules in the summer from the red tees (what??). Read: it’s too easy. After a few hours you’ll learn to read putts and use the putt preview (hint: use the putt preview after you line your putt up and adjust accordingly). And after a few hours you’ll realize playing single rounds is a waste and you’ll enter a tournament and see that the payout amount increases tenfold compared to single rounds, even if you don’t win. And once you start winning tournaments the upgrade costs become a thing of the past. Essentially, you go from a novice to a monster that not even Tiger can compete with. At the point, the game gets stale, well, after a little while of completely destroying the courses.

The game comes with a few courses ready to play (Pebble Beach, St. Andrews) and along your way to Godliness you unlock more. Thanks to the 3.0 software update you can even – now, in the latest versions – buy additional courses from the Pro Shop in-game, but I haven’t. $0.99 for an additional course? Nice try, EA. In addition to useless features such as the Pro Shop, Tiger Woods PGA Tour has a number of glitches and incomplete areas that really bring the experience down in my book.

"It's in the hole" - Bill Murray, Caddyshack

First, the score-keeping is inaccurate. One time I was at about -50 through 54 holes (yeah, exactly: insane) and had to quit. I chose to save my progress and quit, as opposed to just hitting the home button. When I returned my score was drastically lower, in the -30s. Big deal? Well, yeah. I don’t know if there’s a score limitation by design, or if it is a glitch, but it should correctly record your score, period. Another annoying glitch is the fact that the game only starts about every other time. When it doesn’t work it hangs on the loading screen but eventually just kicks you back to your home screen. Here are some more glitches: when you’re putting, the suspense of whether it will drop or miss is completely ruined since the camera shot for a make is the same 99% of the time, as is the camera shot for a miss; when playing on uneven ground, such as out of a pot bunker, your character will hit the ball and walk towards the shot, sending him straight into the ground like he’s wading in water.

The biggest miss this game makes is the vast separation between your character and other players in the game. Once you get to a certain point, it’s absolutely dumbfounding how much better you are. In ridiculous games like the old NFL Blitz series, it was even. In this game, it’s far from. They could have at least included a difficulty setting so you can play against people who don’t shoot -10 when you’re shooting -50. I haven’t tried the multiplayer option for lack of camaraderie, but that could be a solution to the lack of competition in the game, itself.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour is definitely worth the $4.99 price tag, but it’s not a great game. It’s fun, but not fantastic. It misses on technical notes, but what I feel is really important is that you learn to feel the shots. You can go from calculating distances based on yardage and percentages to simply knowing the shot, which is something I never fully experienced in the console versions I played.

Ocie (a fellow Appstruck writer) has Touch Hockey on his iPhone, one of the originals in the App Universe, so he may or may not review that soon. I actually like that one a fair bit, but I stumbled upon this one, Air Hockey by Acceleroto, just two days ago, and I’m equally enchanted with its simplicity, and more cartoon-like nature. Air Hockey is powered by OpenFeint, so you can deal with the whole leaderboard and multiplayer thing if you wish, but I prefer battling the computer or engaging a friend to play with me. If battling the computer, there are 6 levels of difficulty – a bit much, considering Easy, Normal, Hard is the golden rule for most games, but for this game, it’s actually nice to have the Kiddie and Expert options, to ease you into better playing performance. Kiddie is ridiculously easy, but perfect for kids, as the name connotes, and the computer barely makes contact with the puck, just tapping it lightly, or kissing it, so it’s sent in your general direction at a maddeningly tired pace. If you could even call it a pace – it’s more like sledding on a 2% grade. However, on the opposite spectrum, Insane is exactly as it reads: Insane. I’m not even sure what I expected when I chose it, smirking to myself, but it shocked me by going the speed of light, the opponent moving quicker than my eye could follow, and the puck being zinged all around the screen, in some eye-scrambling chaos. There was absolutely no way I could win against this thing. Or, so I thought.

Insane mode is actually the easiest mode if you play correctly. And by play correctly I mean don’t play at all. Position your mallet right in front of the goal, obstructing its entrance, and let your computer opponent go crazy, thwacking this way and that, playing against himself and the walls. Eventually, he’ll miscalculate and the puck will shoot into his own goal. Oh, ho, well fancy that, I just won a point! I left the game alone on my desk while I foraged in my fridge for some guava juice, and by the time I came back, a minute later, I had won. Gee, this makes up for all those lost attempts at the claw vending machine in my childhood. Of course, this doesn’t make for a very fun game in the long run – it’s just momentarily amusing how you can foil the system by doing nothing. Played regularly, though, Air Hockey is supremely fun, fast-paced, pleasant to look at, and is smooth as can be. There is some choppiness when you play multiplayer via OpenFeint or just online, but as long as you have a decent connection, this shouldn’t pose as too much of a problem. Playing peer to peer on the same iPhone works splendidly. Plus, I really like the color scheme of Air Hockey as opposed to Touch Hockey – Touch Hockey, I suppose, is more realistic with its blue and red mallets and white playing field (the sound effects may, arguably, also be more realistic), but Air Hockey has a cartoonish blue playing field with beige mallets and a red puck with loud, but agreeable clacking sounds as plastic hits plastic. Sure, the developer shamelessly plugs his name in the center of the field, so you’ll subliminally remember it against your will, but it’s not unsightly or anything. You can even play with two pucks, if you so desire, to really amp up the gameplay.

Now, with Air Hockey, you can avoid the pimple-riddled youth at arcades, and those wasteful tokens (they usually end up in your drawers or shoebox, anyway), and just play for free on your iPhone. Air Hockey has been around for decades and it’s still as fun as ever. How much better does it get?

Yesterday I discussed how much fun bowling can be, but today, I’ve shifted my focus to tennis. Aside from golf, I can’t think of a more uptight, frilly, steeped in aristocratic breeding, white sport than tennis. The sport just oozes British accents and white shorts, polo shirts, matching terry head and wristbands, and an immaculately groomed appearance. Hmm, maybe I’m confusing tennis with polo. That’s tennis’ stereotype anyway, even when contrasted with Serena Williams’ often questionable and revealing fashion choices on court, and the rippling, bronzed god that is Rafael Nadal. But, I love watching tennis on TV. The women are always grunting, sweat is always pouring off the players’ faces, and then there’s Roger Federer, who with his ridiculous good looks, perfect coif, perfect form, and ever white uniform, should be branded the face of tennis – like Laetitia Casta being cast as the face of France. There are plenty of tennis games out there to put users in the shoes of these great tennis pros, but Real Tennis 2009 isn’t too shabby at all.

Real Tennis 2009 is definitely a solid tennis game — if you’re not ready to be quick on your virtual feet, or are looking for something more casual, you might check elsewhere. But with eight players, seven courts and three surfaces (not to mention some interesting multiplayer options to try), it’s a worthwhile tennis experience. The full version is priced decently at $4.99, but if you just want a quick overview, try out the free version – the gameplay is still there, there are just limits on court options and, unfortunate for some, no multiplayer. The whole game is flashy and dazzling, with game replays, and intermissions where, for five or so seconds, you watch your player recoup his wits and muscles on the sidelines, drinking from his sports bottle. I really like these little details – it adds a lot of personality to the game.

The game plays pretty well, though the players are controlled with onscreen buttons rather than touchscreen gestures. One thing I’ve noticed about iPhone games with built-in touchscreen buttons is they’re not terribly responsive. Something about your sweaty finger getting stuck on the screen, or the grease from your finger obscuring the screen’s ability to tactily respond to and translate your every swipe and tap just makes for a poorer game than those that rely on gestures. Besides – having buttons onscreen, while malleable (they could be on the left, or right, of hey, why not in the center), are kind of a throwback to almost archaic methods, no matter how tried and true they are. Even if Gameloft had you move the characters by tilting the iPhone, it would improve the playability. Serving is the only activity that tries to take full advantage of the iPhone’s controls: you can target your serve with the accelerometer, and then tap the screen anywhere when the serve meter is full. But, at least the game is fun: The action is pretty fast, and sometimes too fast. If you don’t get moving in the right direction right off the ball, your player will most likely end up diving and missing. Or just missing in a silly, obvious manner. Don’t worry, you’ll be able to watch it in instant replay.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the game lies in its impressive four-player WiFi multiplayer. That could be pretty impressive – if you can find three other people with iPhones and the game to play (hopefully, you’ll have more luck with this than finding other Harry Potter fans to duel). Single player is good enough for me, though, and I easily passed the time volleying with the AI – who have a tendency to hit the mark exactly (all the time). It’ll be awhile before I rise beyond the Rookie status, if I’m even at that level, but this game is far more enjoyable for me than playing the actual sport. When I play in life, I sort of make it up as a I go along, diving to the left and right and striking the ball whenever possible. I tend to cringe and later fume, not so quietly, when my boyfriend offers suggestions on my form. I do have plenty of stamina (cardio is my friend), so the quick switch-around and momentous, pirouetted leap are but two of the reflexive techniques in my repertoire, but I digress – I’ve never been one to participate in competitive sports. For one, I’m far too competitive. With games I was always the one throwing the controller across the room, or, in one famous incident among my brothers and I, when Diablo killed me in the first Diablo, and I screamed, picked up my director’s chair, and threw it across the room, near where my brothers were perched. My brothers left soon after that. I’m so calm and collected in my daily life that sports unleash my childish temper tantrum, where I just let loose with the primal screams and pout in a very unflattering and unforgiving manner. Plenty of people thrive in this type of competition, but I’d rather team up and rock climb, or run together, or take a long hike. Those are sports too, in a sense, perhaps not as most Americans define “sport” (i.e. football, basketball, baseball, tennis), but they’re right up my alley. But, I enjoy playing most sports games – with Real Tennis 2009 I’m a step removed from the sport, and I can rest assured knowing my players onscreen will always have better form than me.

Well, no, I have plenty other apps up my sleeve, but let’s remember: bowling is a legitimate sport. Created some time in the 1800s, in the 1950s and 60s bowling alleys became immensely popular in the United States, so much that the LA Times described them as “small cities in themselves” in reflection over the millions of dollars (and people) allocated toward this burgeoning sport. Today, bowling exists with much less vivacity than it did in its golden days, but it’s still a local venue in many towns and cities peppered throughout the United States, and in other countries, like Australia, where its popularity once rivaled that of rugby and soccer. The AMF World Cup – arguably the Wimbledon of the bowling world – stands alongside the World Tenpin Masters and the Weber Cup as the largest, and most prestigious annual, international bowling competition; the World Tenpin Masters is, apparently, the world’s leading televised bowling tournament due to its dramatic setup of a single lane buffered on all sides by terraced seating. Now, bowling may seem a little dull on the surface, but once you watch those powerful curve balls and lightning quick tosses, topped off with that magical, clacking of the pins as they fall down, hopefully in a strike, then you can understand how bowling can be exciting. But, really, it’s just plain fun.

When I saw Action Bowling Free, I immediately remembered my most recent visit to the bowling lanes. No, I wasn’t eight – shockingly, I was 25, because it was a mere few weeks ago. A friend nostalgically wanted to bowl at the AMF lanes in Petaluma, and like any nighttime event, there were drinks, black lighting and offensively white teeth, loud music, and the echoing clatter of leaden balls striking wooden pins. Before the iPhone, it was hard to recreate the experience of live bowling – or any sport, for that matter – but now that we have the iPhone (and the Wii), miming the act of throwing a ball has become so much easier. In Action Free Bowling, you use your iPhone as a you would a bowling ball,  swinging it back and letting it go as you move your swing forward. Let’s be clear – don’t throw your iPhone. We at Appstruck encourage you to hold onto that expensive phone with an iron grip. I guess I should take note, since I already flung my phone across the room, in a frenzied, excited burst of bowling energy. No, instead, you press down on the screen with your thumb to start the swing, then simply lift your thumb as you “let go.” It’s great. If you want, you can take it to dramatic lengths, holding your iPhone right beneath your chin and squinting your eyes, imagining those pins several yards away, then stepping into your swing and letting it rip full throttle. Or, you could be lazy and take the touch gesture route, flinging your finger onscreen to make your ball roll. The motion controls make for a more difficult game, especially since you can twist your wrists to the right or left, mimicking the movement it would take to throw a curveball or hook. The game really encourages you to play around with the physics – and those physics are much better than other bowling apps I’ve tried.

In the full version, you can customize bowling ball colors, change your environment to any of 12 different bowling alleys, play in practice mode to improve your form, play with multiple players on one device (this is a real plus), and lastly, engage in a chipper, if odd, round of bowling history trivia. I only have the free version so far, but it suits my needs perfectly. I definitely wouldn’t mind a change in bowling ball color – the game’s default is a crummy brick red with the usual, cheesy, tiger stripe striations – but funnily enough, you can customize your bowling style in the free version to a small extent. If you access the Settings page, you can choose to favor either a straight, a curve, or a hook throw; or, you can select the custom field, and customize your spin and speed. Pretty cool, if I say so myself, but not as cool as having the option to turn the music to silent. The music isn’t bad, by any means – it’d be perfect in a techno club circa the mid 1990s, or just anywhere in Europe – but it does get repetitive, and is somewhat ill-fitting for the sport of bowling. With this kind of music, I expect the game’s bowling lanes to be decked in cosmic colors, with black lighting and neon strobe lights. Hey, now there’s an idea!

The game is straightforward enough: try to knock down as many pins as possible, have fun, and watch the game keep track of the score for you – to make it more lifelike, the screen is set up in a mirror example of a real bowling alley. My form greatly improved near the end of my first round, but I still only scored a pretty low 134. My next round through, I was up to 280. It may not translate to real bowling, but if I buy the full version, at least I can knock down my opponents, and then maybe one day knock them out on the real lanes. To my surprise, bowling still ranks as the number one participatory sport in the United States, with 54 million Americans ages 6 and over bowling at least once a year. How can that be?, you may ask. It seems bowling is easy for anyone to pick up – pay a small fee and all the equipment you need is immediately within your reach, and playing entails a simple swing and roll of a weighted ball. Even kids can master the between-the-legs roll and knock down a few pins. Anyone can love bowling, and Action Bowling Free just takes the fun home.

I wanted to resist at first, but then let myself have at Pong Double, because frankly I find this kind of game a bit hard to put down. It’s all about finger eye coordination as gameplay requires you to slide your finger on your screen left and right to control where your paddle(s) move to bounce the ball back to your opponent, and the ball can bounce off the side walls. When the ball gets past you or your opponent, a point is scored.

Great Features:

• Single and Double Paddles
• 3 Difficulty Settings
• Play against Computer, or a Friend
• Online High Scores

It seems almost required to have an online high score leaderboard attached to a game today. I don’t know if it’s always necessary, but then again I’ve never made a real dent in any of these. I can’t imagine who gets these kind of high scores. Wait! I forsee a training islands where evil masters train young promising hopefuls from around the globe and hold an annual competition of the world’s best Pong fighters to compete, which is where all of these scores come from. Hm, I’ve been watching too much Bruce Lee. Wait again! Next time I’ll do my research prior to making secret agent island references. I’ve made it as number 5 worldwide (for an easy setting). Now I’m going to strut my stuff and tell the other island kids who’s boss.

Back to Pong Double! Maybe I’m a bit out of practice, but the medium setting owns me every time I play against the computer. I’d say this is a good thing though because a)I’m not bad at Pong Double and b) when there is an easy option available, the medium and advanced options should always lean towards more difficult. Good job Enora Software in doing this game justice.

Tiny Troubles:

• Fat Fingers

“Sounds like a personal problem.” My only complaint is that while moving my finger across the screen, it is usually a bit on top of my back paddle. Fixing this would require a slight redesign and take away from precious pong-estate. Although maybe a few pixels would be worth it to make play a bit easier… but I’m biased.

This all being said, you can move your finger anywhere on your table to move your paddles. My little finger issue determined my playing strategy (mostly using the front paddle). Maybe it will influence yours as well?

Bottom Line:

Get it! This is a great game alone or with a friend and does not require internet access to work (it does require internet access for high scores though). This is a reliable game that’s an enjoyable procrastination.

Something Special:

To celebrate the release of Pong Double Enora Software is having a huge competition where the main price is up to 20,000 USD. All it takes to participate is signing up for their newsletter.