FB Review

I am not a big fan of bowling, I spend more time in the gutter then a sewer rat, but nevertheless I am fan of Facebook applications.  One such application is a great little game called Bowling Buddies from Playfish.  Playfish Studios is one of the biggest application developers on Facebook and always produces quality and entertaining application such as ‘Whos Got the Biggest Brain’ and ‘Word Challenge’.  Bowling Buddies is one of the most popular applications on Facebook with nearly 3.5 Million active monthly users.  The goal of the game is rather obvious – knock down all the pins with as little bowls as possible.  It does take quite a bit of practice to master the nuances of the user interface before you can throw perfect strikes.  You have to keep bowling at just the right speed and area to hit a strike so you will need to practice for a while before you start rolling those strikes.  The only drawback of the game is that it is quite repetitive; Playfish must have realized that this can become pedantic after a while, so they added different badges that you can win by reaching various achievements.  The achievements include things such scoring more than 200 points, or bowling faster than 40km/h.  The achievement badges then appear under your avatar (which is customizable – another great feature) for everyone to see. What I like about the game is actual dynamics of the 3D graphics and actual game play, the flash is very responsive and nearly all the rolls are unique.   Like most Facebook applications you can also challenge your friends to games.  The challenge function works well in that you don’t need the other player to be online at the same time.  Once you challenge someone you play a ‘challenge’ game where your score is stored until the other player accepts the challenge.  The winner is decided by who gets the higher score.  Overall a very fun and engaging application to play and typical of what we have come to expect from Playfish.