As you surely know, last week was spring break for most school kids. In our family that means at least a dozen hours spent on airplanes and in airports. So before we took off I stocked my iPod Classic with a couple of new games -- The Sims Bowling (reviewed here) and Texas Hold 'em (review coming soon).

The Sims Bowling turned out to be more fun than I expected. Among other things you can create your own Sim player and play a game within a game to try to make your Sim player the most popular Sim at the bowling alley

I spent about five minutes playing with those parts of the game, but I quickly grew bored with them. Fortunately, those parts of the game are the icing on the cake and The Sims Bowling is first and foremost an arcade-style bowling game. If you like that Sim stuff you may enjoy those parts of the game more than I did. But it only took me a few minutes to determine that I preferred the bowling aspect by a wide margin.

You can play against a computerized (iPod-ized?) opponent or against another human, but gameplay is the same either way.

Rolling the ball is always a four-step process...

Step 1 - Set the position of your feet:

You use the scroll wheel to move your feet left or right and press the select button when you're happy with your position. In the picture above, my feet are right in the middle of the lane, which happens to be a good place to start on your first roll of a frame.

Step 2 - Set the power of your roll:

See the white line between the red and blue areas of the power meter? It represents the perfect amount of power for a roll. The green part is the power indicator, which determines how hard you roll. It moves up and down -- from the ball at the bottom to the end of the red area at the top -- and it moves fairly quickly. The object is to click the select button when the green is closest to the white line without touching the red. If you miss and click when it's anywhere in the red, the aim indicator in step 3 will move at double its normal speed, which makes it twice as hard to aim accurately.

Step 3 - Aim:

The aim indicator swings from left to right and back again. Like the power indicator, it moves fairly quickly and if you clicked in the red part in step 2, it moves even faster. The object is to click the select button when it's pointing to where you want the ball to go. In the figure above I'm aiming ever-so-slightly to the left of center.

Step 4 - Set the amount of spin:

The final step is to set the amount of spin. The green spin indicator moves back and forth in the blue area; the object is to click the select button when the green represents the amount of spin you wish to apply. In the figure above, the green area ends slightly to the right of the mid-line, so this roll will curve slightly to the right.

Notice that the blue area on the left and right sides of the white mid-line aren't equally sized. That's because if you're a right-handed bowler (as I am), you can put much more leftward spin on the ball than you can rightward spin. Ergo, the left-hand spin area is much larger than the right.

When you click the select button in step 4, you set the amount of spin and at the same time, release the ball. You watch the ball roll down the alley from the bowler's perspective:

Then, when the ball gets near the pins the perspective switches to an overhead view so you can see exactly what is happening to the pins in real time.

In the figure above I've left four pins standing, two on either side of the alley. For what it's worth, it'll be nearly impossible for me knock down all four of those pins with my second roll, which is to say that it's highly unlikely I'll pick up the spare.

It's not as easy is you might think... it took me a while to get to a point where I could break 200 with any regularity. And it's quite addictive -- once you get the hang of it you'll find yourself trying to beat your personal best over and over again.

The Sims Bowling is compatible with the 3rd generation iPod nano, iPod classic, and 5th generation iPod only.

The Bottom Line

The Sims Bowling is an enjoyable diversion that's easy to learn yet difficult to master -- just what I wish for in an iPod game. On the other hand, it's quite repetitive and I was sick of it long before the end of our trip and suspect it will be a long while before I'll want to play it again.