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While EA is gracing the world with (yet another) The Sims spin off, called “The Sims Bowling“, PDAmill just released a bowling simulation that actually sounds like fun.

Fast Food meets Physical Education

Most Pocket PC gamers know PDAmill from the Arvale franchise, a collection of amazingly funny RPGs. I have enjoyed PDAMill games in the past and naturally, I wanted to see if this title would manage to live up to my expectations too.

I have to admit up front that I am not much of a bowler. I know that the ball has to knock over the pins and that you are not supposed to throw the ball in a way that would make it jump lanes or even damage the lane, but apart from that, I never really got into the game.

Meet the competition

The Bowling for Burgers Tournament has been going for some time now and you’re in the final stage of the tournament. Three players left. The cool Slick Bacher, the lovely Maggie Monroe and the no-nonsense Mr. Cube. All three of them have different attributes; while one might have an incredible amount of luck (most probably, due to her looks), the others enjoy a high level of strength or accuracy.

Don’t mind your step

With normal bowling, you would get a foul if you were to step over the line, it would void any points you received for your delivery and you would be one step closer to losing. With Bowling for Burgers, you do not have to concern yourself with all these complicated things, you just have to play.

Rolling the ball is simple: pick a good starting position (hint: the center of the lane is a good start) and then swipe your stylus in the direction you want the ball to go. The stronger your swipe, the faster the ball will go.

You can further influence the way the ball interacts with the pins by adjusting the weight or by hitting (or avoiding) one of the extras:

Since this competition is heavily sponsored by burger joints, you will occasionally find yourself in a situation where a strange object appears on your lane. It might be good, it might be bad, the only way to find out what kind of effect it has is to roll your ball over it.

The goal is simple: knock down as many pins as possible. If you manage to knock down all ten on your first roll, you hit a strike, if you manage to “clean up” with your second roll, its called a spare. The more pins you knock down, the higher your score will be after the last frame and who knows, you might even manage to hit a turkey.

Blow or blowout?

If you are looking for a dead serious bowling simulation, Bowling for Burgers is not for you. This game is as funny as bowling can get without real people. There’s the entertaining 50’s music, beautifully drawn graphics and, in general a great user experience, because gamers do not need to know anything about the game.

The game will set you back about $20 and will keep you entertained for many hours. Bowling for Burgers is one of those titles that you can keep playing no matter what. It does not start to annoy you after a few rounds and has a high replayability factor.

A trial version is available at PDAmill’s site, so I suggest you check out the game for yourself.

A big thank you goes out to Nate Nelson for providing me with all those fancy bowling terms and explaining the basic rules of the game to me.

Google just stealth-launched a new service (beta, naturally) in the Americas called AdSense for mobile. The service has already been tested for about 15 months now in Japan and was deemed successful enough to roll it out to a broader public.

While I am not a huge fan of advertising in general, I believe that the monetary reward that a publisher can get from services like AdSense can be beneficial to the end user as far as making content freely available goes.

If Google enforces the same guidelines as it does with “normal” AdSense, I believe that this will be a great way to provide mobile users with content free of charge, while at the same time being able to monetize those same visitors.

Hot on the heels of Fast Company’s announcement about Fast Cities and the lack thereof as far as Europe goes, Saul Klein and Reshma Sohoni announced their newest initiative called Seedcamp.

Klein’s vision is simple:

We’re looking for the brightest and the best young entrepreneurs across Europe, Middle East and Africa to blow us away with their ideas for game-changing businesses.

What’s even better is that Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, of The Next Web fame, decided to provide some additional exposure to two of the selected Seedcamp teams.

Watch out Fast Company, next year, Europe will most certainly have a lot more to show than we did this year.

When you’re a technological nomad, there’s one thing you can’t live without: power. Your Pocket PC isn’t worth anything if you can’t power it up, an iPod without juice is like those old LP albums your dad has in the basement: useless.

Thanks to Proporta, you can now charge your devices while you’re in a car. All you need is an USB cable that connects to your device and a cigarette lighter outlet. Pretty ingenious design if you ask me, because the USB port enables you to use any device you own with the plug.

This accessory sets you back a mere $8.95 and you’ll be thankful that you got it when you still had a chance. Right now, Proporta is even running a promotion where you can get one for free as long as you order something else from them. Get yours while they still have stock!

Only two weeks ago, James from isotope244 presented his latest creation to the world. Yesterday, the final version of Machines at War was released. Reason enough for me to take a closer look at what promises to be the hottest real time strategy (RTS) game of the summer:

The Art of War

If you ever played Atomic Cannon (Pocket), you already know that isotope244 prides themselves with the creation of amazing graphics. James and his crew are using the Atom Engine once again and even though this is the same technology that powered games as long as three years ago, the graphics still look better than with most other current Pocket PC games.

The loading screens of the game are probably the first artwork you will pay attention to: depicting aggressive, yet strangely beautiful scenes of battle, they make the (mostly short) loading times bearable.

Next, you’ll be presented with a spartan interface: a sidebar to the right with access to the game menu, the help function, with a useful tutorial and buttons for four of your attack teams and a shortcut to get back to your base.

The lower third of the screen is used by, what I like to call, the command and control bar: It provides the player with all the information that is needed.

To the left are the meters for credits, power and the primary form of income of this game: Ore. Right next to it is the most important part of the control interface: your build tools. What I liked most about the building process is that you can queue up as many units as you want (well, can afford anyway) and also get to see a little timer that tells you when to expect your reinforcements.

Epic Movie: no, epic battles: yes!

Battles these days aren’t fun anymore, you see a group of soldiers fighting a few stray rebels in some desert country and maybe, just maybe, you’ll see a tank every now and then and if you’re really lucky, you’ll see some explosions.

Machines of War is different, here the old principle of overwhelming force still applies to and boy, what a feast this is. You may be playing this on a Pocket PC or Smartphone, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy battles that take up multiple screens. Yes, you could build small strike teams and take out the enemy one-by-one, but believe me, its a lot more fun to just crush the enemy with your whole platoon and then take one final look at the destruction you caused.

To keep your ears happy too, isotope244 created a whole array of sounds. Combined with a fitting score that adds to the flair of the game but doesn’t disrupt your focus, you can enjoy the various explosions and weapon sounds and you might even hear the occasional radio chatter.

The Borg will adapt and so will Machines of War

RTS games can be very difficult, after all, keeping up with the needs of a huge army isn’t exactly a piece of cake. Luckily, isotope244 included a variety of different mutators you can adjust to make the game as hard (or easy) as you want to. Most of these mutators are pretty standard, like the amount of money and resources or the speed of the game but there are two that are quite uncommon:

Machines of War provides you with the possibility to play the game with adaptive difficulty. What that means is that, the better you are, the harder the CPU player(s) will retaliate. This is a great way to play the game without having to fear that your enemy will be too easy to defeat.

The other feature is the so-called AutoPlay option of the game helps you with building your base. You can just sit back and let the CPU build your defenses for you, but you can also intervene when you deem it necessary.

Military Science

You’re in the army now, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t have to study. Well, not you, Commander, but your underlings do, and they are very good at it. Machines of War has one of these rare R&D features that allows you to improve your units as you play the game.

Granted, you could beat the game without ever upgrading any unit at all, but its a lot easier to have those eggheads research some new toys and then put them to good, military, use. The best part of this is probably that, besides a set amount of time, you don’t have to spend anything on these upgrades.

Long story short

All in all, Machines of War is a great game. It’s fun to play, easy to understand and has enough options to keep you coming back for more for a long time. I expect this game to be just as popular with mobile Commanders around the world as Atomic Cannon was so get your copy now, because, as far as Pocket PC games go, you can’t spend $20 better right now and who knows, you might even find the easter egg that’s included.

The only thing that I am missing in this game is some form of multiplayer support but who knows, a feature like that might be available in a future version…

Update - July 21st, 2007
I just uploaded a couple of screenshots that show the destruction of terrain over time. Please be aware that these images are 1600 x 1600 pixels and come in at 1.2 mb each, but they are definitely the download.