By Brad Cook

You enter the final frame down by seven pins. Your opponent, Don L., accomplished a turkey — the third of three strikes in a row — in the ninth frame. You open frame ten with a strike before rolling a ball that leaves you with a baby split, or the number two and seven pins still standing. You approach your final roll at an angle, spinning the ball just enough to knock one pin into the other. Spare accomplished.

Don L. — Sims 2 fans know he’s Don Lothario, the Pleasantview Romeo — loses his cool on his first frame ten roll, throwing a ball that only takes out two pins. He also fails to knock down the eight pins that would have earned him a spare and given him a third turn. Despite a weak finish to the game, he manages to eke out a victory, but all was not lost, because you improved your Sim’s aspiration level enough to unlock the titanium bowling ball for sale at the SimShop. It will definitely improve your game.

Bowl Your Heart Out

But first it’s time to head home, where your Sim’s house is quickly becoming the place for parties: you’ve adorned it with a widescreen TV, an air hockey table, and a dance floor, among other cool stuff. While there, you receive an offer for a better job. You accept, earning extra Simoleons to spend at the bowling alley. Your Sim aspires for nothing more than friendship, so it’s time to hit the lanes again.

While there, you practice some of the tougher pin set-ups in the game, including the infamous 7-10 split. Knocking off one of those during competition will earn you the 7-10 Split Trophy, which would look nice back home next to the awards commemorating your 200-point game, five strikes in a row, and other feats. There’s just one prize you’re not hoping to earn: the one given to bowlers who manage five gutter balls in a game.

If you’d rather not play a traditional game of bowling against an opponent (choose Pass-n-Play to go head-to-head with a human one), you can always opt for a Spare-O-Thon or a Strike-O-Thon. The former serves up spares of all types, from a lone pin, known as the mother-in-law, to the 7-10, and challenges you to complete them in three tries or less. You earn more points by doing so in fewer tries, with the reward increasing with the difficulty of the spares, and the winner is the bowler who scores higher than the other.

In a Strike-O-Thon, you string together as many strikes as you can, earning 10 points for one, 40 points for back-to-back strikes, 90 points for three in a row, and so forth. You must complete the spare if you miss a strike or your game will end. As in a Spare-O-Thon, one bowler can fail and drop out while the other keeps going and adds to her total score. If you break your string of strikes, you must start over with 10 points for the first one.

Finesse Your Shots

No matter how you choose to bowl, the mechanics are the same: set up your position on the lane, choose the amount of power, select an angle, and then apply spin. Just be careful when applying power to your roll, or you could go over the line and commit a foul, thus forfeiting that half of the frame. As Walter Sobchak said: “This is not ‘Nam. This is bowling. There are rules.” He’d give Don L. a run for his Simoleons.

Tips and Tricks

• Bowling is a game of finesse, not brute power. Don’t hurl the ball down the middle of the lane as hard as you can and expect a strike. Start from one side or the other and use spin to sweep the ball into the pins, scattering them more effectively than a head-on approach. You want the pins to spin when they fall over, which gives you a better chance of knocking over the ones still standing.
• That tactic also comes in handy when you’re facing a split, assuming the remaining pins aren’t too far apart. If you’re facing a 7-9 — or even the infamous 7-10 — split, your only hope is to nick one pin on the side, kicking it across the lane to take out the other one.
• Right-handed bowlers are better at spinning the ball to the left than to the right. The opposite is true for left-handed Sims.
• The more power you apply to a shot, the faster the aiming guide will move across the screen, increasing your chance of botching that roll. If your aim winds up off, correct it with the proper amount of spin in the opposite direction.
• Press the Select button to skip your opponents’ shots, if you’d rather not watch them. You can also press the Select button to end replays of your strikes and spares.

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• Site: The Sims Bowling
• Publisher: Apple Inc.
• Developer: Electronic Arts
• Genre: Sports

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