The bowling game itself -- the meat of AMF Xtreme Bowling for Prizes -- feels entirely "off." The set-up is pretty easy to understand. You choose your position on the lane, set the power meter, aim, put any desired spin on the ball, and finally release. But at that point, it feels both literally and figuratively out of your hands. The ball sometimes gets a mind of its own and careens down the side, just to bloop into the gutter at the last possible second. And then when pin contact is finally made, it seems like a crapshoot as to whether they will fall or not. When the camera swings to a top-down view of the pins, you will see falling pins or the ball hit the edge of a pin, but the pin remains standing. Sure, it wiggles a little, but then the camera jerks away so fast you cannot see if it fell or not. More often than not, it remains standing. And you start seething, especially since you are in a competition for real world prizes, and some bizarro world calculation just determined that your roll sucked.

The rest of AMF Xtreme Bowling for Prizes is fine. InfoSpace has a great tournament and head-to-head system in place, and it doesn't fail in AMF Xtreme Bowling for Prizes. Setting up a game against another player is simple, where you basically just compare ten frames against each other to see who has the best score and who finished fastest. The weekly tournaments tally overall scores and award bowling gift certificates to the best players. Getting set up and entering your scores in AMF Xtreme Bowling for Prizes is very simple, and reminded me of why the franchise became so successful in the first place.

Even on an LG VX8000, AMF Xtreme Bowling for Prizes is not the most attractive bowler in the alley. The lanes are dull to look at and the animated figures that represent your bowler are downright ugly. The music and sound effects are much better.