PBA Pro Bowling 2021 Early Review

[Padgoi]

With the news coming out only a few days ago that FarSight Studios was releasing PBA Pro Bowling 2021 today right before the Christmas holiday, it really didn't give the bowling community much time to actually get excited.* And with the PBA 2020 Game being nothing short of awful, I don't think much was expected from this game.* Now couple that with the $24.99 price tag in the Playstation store and you can't really expect much of a difference from the 2020 version.* And don't worry . . . if that's what you were expecting, you won't be disappointed.

Of course, if you were actually expecting a new game with updated gameplay, you will be sorely frustrated.

Instead of going over what the game has and doesn't have, I'm going to actually compare the trailer to what you actually get in the game.

The very first thing the trailer mentions is that you can now play as your favorite pro, which is something that was totally missing from the 2020 version that almost everyone wanted.* Well, the good news is, yes, you can play as a number of pros, including Andrew Anderson, Walter Ray Williams Jr., Jason Belmonte, Parker Bohn III, Chris Barnes, Dom Barrett, Jakob Butturff, Norm Duke, Liz Johnson, Tommy Jones, Shota Kawazoe, Marshall Kent, Francois Lavoie, Wes Malott, Bill O'Neill, Rhino Page, Osku Palermaa, Sean Rash, Ronnie Russell, Matt Sanders, Anthony Simonsen, Tom Smallwood, Jesper Svensson, EJ Tackett, Kyle Troup and Stuart Williams.* That's a huge cast right?* The bad news is . . . you can't play as yourself.* At all.* In any mode.* That's right folks, if you were dreaming of creating yourself and starting a career in the PBA . . . well, too bad.* But we'll get to career mode later.

The next thing mentioned in the trailer is a new mode where you can play online in head-to-head matches.* Unfortunately, in the little time I have had with the game, I haven't had a chance to try this out . . . because no one is online.* There are two options to choose from, Find Match and Private Match.* I've tried to Find a Match 5 times now and it just sits on the screen waiting for another player to join.* Now this might be because it's day one and no one bought the game yet so I will hold out judgment on this part of the game.* In the Private Match section, you can invite anyone on your friends list to join and play against you.* I tried inviting someone but again, no one has the game yet.

Moving along, the next two things the trailer mentions are related to Career Mode and having more tournaments to choose from.* Again, I only got the game today so I didn't delve too much into Career Mode, however there were a few things I did notice that were utterly disappointing.* First off, as mentioned above, you can only start a Career as a Pro.* But that's not it . . . you can only start a Career as a Pro you've unlocked.* And being as you only start with Andrew Anderson, Parker Bohn III, Ronnie Russell, Liz Johnson, Matt Sanders and Osku Palermaa unlocked, it may be some time before you can start a career with someone who isn't unlocked by default.* Now the game does give you 200 gold pins to start with and every locked bowler in the game costs 200 gold pins to unlock, so if you want to start with Belmo, you can unlock him and play, however if you change your mind and want to start with EJ Tackett, you can't until you unlock him with 200 more gold pins, which you're basically going to have to purchase with real money.* And don't worry, you can't even do that yet because the online store isn't open yet.

New Equipment is then mentioned in the trailer and I am happy to say that yes, there are a ton of bowling balls in the game from basically every major manufacturer.* The problem?* You start with very standard balls and in order to unlock them, you have to wait until you're at like level 50 and up, which can take QUITE a while.* So if you want to start a career with the Storm Axiom, you're gonna have to wait a while to unlock it.
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And that brings us to by far the most disappointing part of the new game, which is oil patterns and oil break down. The trailer says the oil patterns are even more realistic with lane oil breakdown.* Nope, not at all.* How bad is it?* The PBA Shark is a 48 foot pattern, known as a very high volume oil pattern.* The Cheetah is a 39 foot pattern with less friction so the ball is expected to move a bit more.* Unfortunately there is almost (actually I didn't see any at all) no difference whatsoever in these two oil patterns.*Any competitive bowler knows that oil patterns, break down and carry down are HUGE factors when bowling and this game, once again, simply doesn't capure that aspect of the sport at all.

Listen, the game came out a few days ago and many of these issues can probably be fixed with patches, but based on what we saw from last year's game, I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for a fix.* For a $25 price tag, it might be worth the investment if only because it's simply not a lot of money, but if you're expecting a brand new game with all the bells and whistles of a new game, you're going to be flat out disappointed.**

Early Rating: 3/10


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