Brunswick Circuit Pro Bowling is one of the best bowling games available, and is sure to please any fan of bowlng.
The game modes are pretty simple. You've got exhibition, which is the normal bare bones bowling. You get skins games, where you play for money, tournament mode which is basically the bowling equivalent to the console sports games' season modes, and Cosmic bowling, which adds all kinds of pretty colors. There's also a character creation option which is pretty good for a game of it's time, but nothing truly great there. I prefer to just play as the real pro bowlers.
The bowling gameplay itself is pretty simple, but addictive. It mostly works like golf games. You take aim, choose which ball you want to use, choose whether you want to put spin on the ball, and if so, how much spin. And then you let 'er rip with mouse clicks on a meter that moves back and forth. One for speed and one for accuracy. Simple. When the ball gets there, the pins all animate with tremendous realism. It'd probably be hard to get pins to move in a more realistic fashion even after 8 years.
Putting spin on the ball is a skill that takes practice to learn, but after you've learned it, it helps you knock the pins down. But there's one big flaw with the gameplay. You don't need to ever put any spin on the ball. If you just send it straight down, a little bit off so it doesn't go directly in the middle, it's easy to either strike or spare most of the time, which isn't very realistic.
As for the graphics, they're pretty much standard, and what you'd expect from an 8 year old PC game. The highlight is the pins' animation, as I mentioned before. The pins never go down in the same way twice, and the effect looks very good and real. The rest of the graphics haven't quite stood the test of time. The character models look horrible by today's standards, and the crowds look like someone took photos of a bowling crowd and just put it right in the game in 5 minutes. The balls and lanes look better than the player models, but they aren't amazing either. Also, the game has pretty long loading times, especially when you're playing a game with more than one bowler, as there's a very long load time when switching between bowlers. When you're playing with only one bowler, this load time isn't there though.
The sound is pretty much par for the course. There's the sound of the ball rolling down the lane, and there's a few different sounds for the ball hitting the pins, depending on how hard the pins were hit and how many were knocked down, and the crowd claps, but that's it. There's no voice clips of any kind, and the music is extremely limited.
But despite the uninspired graphics and sound, the actual bowling gameplay is good enough to stand on it's own. This game is the kind of game you'd play for a few days, then put it away for a few months. But then come back again some day when you're in the "bowling mood". As such, this game definitely will not appeal to someone who doesn't like bowling, and it's much more suited to the die-hard bowling fans, as casual fans would probably be perfectly satisfied with one of those free online flash games.
I personally really enjoyed this game though. It's a lot of fun if you're into bowling, and it's fun trying to beat your best score. Getting a 300 game is nearly impossible in this game, but it's fun to keep trying. In the end, Brunswick Circuit Pro Bowling is one of the best bowling games available, and is sure to please any fan of bowling. The video clips of the bowlers basically making themselves look like they're trying to be bad professional wrestlers is also a very fun bonus, and it's good to add some light-hearted laughs to this game. If you love bowling, go find this game somewhere. It's 8 years old so I imagine it'd be pretty cheap.