After playing Wii Sports I am sure I do not need to tell you how exciting it was to think about future games like The BIGS, or Brunswick Pro Bowling, and maybe some day Fight Night and Virtual Tennis coming to the Nintendo Wii platform. To each have their own game, where the developers could take the basic concepts from Wii Sports and then go above and beyond to higher degree of immersion with each individual sport. Unfortunately Brunswick Pro Bowling does not go to much higher.

This is a pretty comprehensive bowling game. You have the quick play option where you and three other people can basically just bowl ten frames. Or you have the career mode. In career mode there are entrance fees and minimum score levels which you must maintain. You can purchase upgrades, different clothes and what not. The graphics look pretty good, but I will be interested to compare them to the PSP and PS2 version of the game. The game play is pretty close to the bowling game in Wii Sports with some small changes. One of those changes is how you position where you will release the ball. In Wii Sports this was done with the directional pad which made it very easy to pick up. In Brunswick Pro Bowling you need to hold down the B button and rotate your Wiimote clockwise to move right and counter clockwise to move left. This is quite cumbersome at first but after a while you do get the hang of it. The other problem is that it is very hard to make minor adjustments to what path you want the ball to take. Adjusting the angle of the roll as well as the approach and throwing the ball are for the most part the same as Wii Sports. The game uses real life looking humans instead of cartoon characters, and these humans actually have legs unlike the Wii Characters.

Aside from the career mode, and the human looking characters there is not much different from Brunswick Pro Bowling to the Bowling in Wii Sports. Bowling fans will definitely get their monies worth. But for the average gamer who just wants to bowl with some friends, Wii Sports is definitely the obvious choice only because you probably already have it and Brunswick Bowling is not substantially different in functionality. Had this game featured online play that would have completely changed my perceptions of this game. The idea of getting to go bowling with a friend or relative who lives far away would be really appealing. Imagine sitting there talking like you were at a real life bowling alley, you take your turn, he takes his turn. Celebrating great frames and engaging in some friend trash talk between the two of you. The only difference would probably be the lack of a cute waitress to bring you your favorite refreshments and snacks.

But the facts are that Brunswick Pro Bowling did not include online play. That being said until you can find it for under $20 it is pretty hard to recommend the game if you already own its equivalent. If you do not have Wii Sports for whatever reason I would definitely recommend renting this game and or buying it for some good fun.

The BIGS should be sitting on store shelves today.  Why should you be excited about yet another sports game?  Well the fact that The BIGS boasts a small learning curve and delivering some of the best animations out there. 

“With The BIGS, we really wanted to put a whole new spin on baseball while still staying true to America’s favorite pastime,” said Greg Thomas, President of Visual Concepts, a 2K Sports studio. “We took all the big action plays intrinsic to the game and made them happen much more often, creating a hero-like presentation of the players and the sport. The BIGS will give gamers spectacular wall catches, dramatic diving grabs, acrobatic double plays and many more dramatic highlight reel moments to deliver a truly new, exciting brand of baseball.”

The BIGS allows players to use turbo and power-ups, which they claim adds a unique level of strategy to the game (of course Fusion Frenzy 2 promised the same thing with the use of “Cards”, and we all know how that turned out).  Now pitching, batting, or playing the outfield can utilize these modifiers to make momentous plays.  Of course real life Baseball has power ups, they are called Steroids. 

All kidding aside this looks like a great game that all sports fans should check out or at the very least give it a rental, and with the easy to learn game play try to get friends and significant excited about the all American pass time of Baseball.

Via Press Release