Between the Buzz! games on PS2 and SingStar on the PS3, Sony seems pretty keen on locking in that "progressively more fun the more drunk you are" angle. All they need now is bowling and pool and they're set. In fact, one could argue that with Home those modes are kinda covered too, though they're basically mini-games. To help thicken up the experience, SCEA is readying High Velocity Bowling, which takes the basic concept of motion-sensor controlled strikes and gutters as seen in Wii Sports and, well, complicates it.

On the one hand, it means you can set up for some rather tricky shots. You basically hold the controller with your right hand (lefties like us in the office are SOL right now), and after tapping X a few times to set your position and angle, you follow the on-screen bowler (of which there will be almost a dozen characters, ditto for alleys) matching his release and, if you nail the speed and timing right, you'll be given a gold star and the ball will basically follow the path. Well, technically it's a green light, and you can further tweak things by using the shoulders to add spin, but we were pretty much experts at throwing it right into the gutter no matter what we tried.

Excusing the slightly crampy, bizarre way in which you hold the SIXAXIS controller, there is room for a fair amount of depth and tweaking here -- not to mention a trick shot mode to perfect busting through those 7/10 splits -- but we simply didn't have enough time to properly get the feeling of things down.

On the other hand this is sort of the polar opposite to Wii Sports' implementation of the game. Perhaps with a little practice, though, we'll actually be able to pull off shots we never could in real life... y'know not until we've had a couple Caucasians and lamented the way our missing rug really tied the room together.