First you select a game from Exhibition, Tournament, Career or "Cosmic Bowling". Then, after choosing your bowler from either a premade list of pros or custom making one (skill level and handedness are the only non-cosmetic options here), you bowl.
The process of bowling in Brunswick Circuit Pro Bowling is evocative of the golfing games of yore, except BCPB devotes two screens to the entire process. First is the "preparation" screen where you choose where the ball will end its travel down the lane, what arc it will take in its travel, and where, left or right of the lane, your bowler will bowl from. The second screen is the "Execution" screen where you simulate the bowler actually bowling. This whole process is about as exciting as winding up a toy monkey: you time your press of the buttons to a sliding meter. After that, you watch as your bowler bowls, the ball travels down the lane, and the pins either fall down or they don't. And watching polygons bowling is less fun than watching the wound-up monkey do its thing.
It's very obvious that THQ was going for the real life bowling simulation in this game so that they could fully utilize the balls, lanes and bowlers of the Brunswick license. The game as a whole, though, is very unsatisfying. The details of the bowlers (premade or custom) don't matter much, though in real life you've got power bowlers, technique bowlers and placement bowlers. Then there are the frustrations of the bowling process itself with its timed button presses that are unchanged by skill level. And don't get us started on the cardboard cutout audiences that make you feel that even a simulated audience was too bored by this game to stick around. The crowd roaring occurs every blinkin' time you bowl, and the soundtrack is dopey (mercifully, you can turn it off).
It's especially frustrating that the different difficulty settings only affect the length of your aiming line in the preparation screen but have no effect in the power and accuracy play screen, where they would be most effective as a means of changing the challenge. Once you leave the aiming screen, you better be ready to get the timing just right, or it's gutter ball time again. It's unconscionable that so much emphasis is placed on two correctly timed presses of the A button when it seems that so little effort went into actually making the bands readable or configurable for different skill levels. Combine this with the fact that you're performing this timing feat up to 21 times in each match, and you can see where the snoring comes in.
If you're looking for a bowling game that has all the excitement and action of a Sunday radio broadcast of bowling with commentary from Ben Stein, this is your game. The uninspired gameplay makes this game really boring; the graphics reinforce the boredom; and the sound is the knockout punch. Play Brunswick Circuit Pro Bowling, and you'll know why Rip Van Winkle slept so long.
