SP Review: Project Summer Ice - Bowling (PS4-PS5)

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Sturmvogel Prime
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SP Review: Project Summer Ice - Bowling (PS4-PS5)

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Bad indie games are like local commercials on TV. We all know the scenario I'm talking about: After watching a beautiful, well made and sometimes expensive commercial for Top Gun: Maverick, Transformers, XBOX, Godzilla VS Kong, M&M's or NASCAR, the national TV signal suddenly cuts off to show a commercial for a local car dealer or furniture store and it's terrible in video quality, looks old for the present time (as if it was made on the 80-90's VHS-era) and lacks of creativity (Seriously, calling a car dealer "Top Gun Motors" sounds like someone's asking for a lawsuit from Paramount). It happens the same with gaming. After playing games such as Ginga Force, Triggerheart Exelica, Raiden, Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, Metal Slug, R-Type Final 2 and Natsuki Chronicles, you suddenly stumble with a disaster of gaming that looks like if it was made with zero budget and zero effort and doesn't look like it belongs to the console you're playing.
That's the category where Project: Summer Ice (A.K.A. ProjectSummerIce), Breakthrough Gaming's partner-in-trash belongs to.



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Mother of Hypocrisy: A bad game wishing you to have fun.

Like Habroxia 2 and Endurance, the game thanks you for buying it and wish you to have fun.
In this game's case, this is a bad spoon of hypocrisy since I and everyone who's reading this review knows the kind of trash these guys make.



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The copyright disclaimer tells us who to blame for this.

Despite of its Girl-themed appearance, Project: Summer Ice Bowling is another of their Christian-themed games, and as the title implies, this is the first of a series of games, and according to the website is not gonna be of one, two or three, but FIVE CHAPTERS for both Jane and Pammy versions, so we're gonna have trash games for some time.
Unlike Our Church and Halloween which made a difference on its gameplay on each chapter, Bowling seems to be the same thing after two Jane chapters and the Pammy one, being the leading character the only difference.



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Do you like bowling?
This game will make you HATE bowling.


The main gameplay structure of Bowling is a simple "Aim and Shoot" button pressing game where the first thing to do is to stop the bowling ball as it moves vertically making an auto-aim and it's up to you to establish a good throwing position. After that comes the ball throwing angle which you'll have to calculate since the game also does that by itself and you only have to tap the button and hope for the best.
In "Play Bowling" the objective is to get 30 points by making 3 perfect splits. "Story Mode" on the other side is navigate through cutscenes and play a few bowling matches. If you failed to reach the perfect score or simply want to try again, the game allows you to do that before leaving the game (in Play Bowling) or proceeding with the story (in Story Mode) giving you a chance to improve and what's more important, being more error tolerant and player friendly. Perfect scoring only works for the sole purpose of getting trophies along with reaching specific amounts of points in the bowling segments of Story Mode. Yeah, all these Bowling games are gonna be that: Trophy Milkers that cost 1 buck.
For a trash game like this, the game designers gave us extra tools like a blurr filter, adjust the transparency of the mouse-like arrow and the option of leaving the game with a button when we make a mistake. Is like they had some ideas for an interface, but few of them are helpful.



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Nice drawings, ruined by overpixelation.

Story Mode pulls a light attempt to a visual novel as we have a slight plot that involves if Jane is in love of Mark or not. During the dialogues we will be playing a few rounds which are virtually identical to the Play Bowling mode. Repeat the process until the game says "Please buy Story Two to continue the story", The end. "Ninmu Kanryou desu" like Nina Lynn would say in the 6th Chapter of Ginga Force.

Time to talk about the graphics. Regardless of which version you're playing, it's quite a suprise that both Breakthrough Gaming and Project: Summer Ice decided to use colorful graphics which is a step forward in comparison with Our Church and Halloween and the Breakthrough Gaming Arcade series. It is also nice to see they've used anime-style characters which is well received for any gamer, but it feels like a "Player bait" to bring players to this trash game, as if it was a double-edged sword that will disappoint players in the end.
To make things worse, all the colorful graphics go down to hell. Starting off with the depiction of the bowling ball and pins as they look like a black circle hitting carnival targets from a "Drop the clown" game, the bowling table looks like a quickly done wooden texture that someone made in photoshop before lunch break and if that wasn't bad enough, it completely falls apart with the overpixelation, as if it was a badly rendered Gameboy Advance game. I mean, even Lexie's portrait in Motocross Maniacs Advance looked much better than this game on its entirety.



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Wru: Now I Know!
Lady Jaye: And knowing is half the battle.

G.I. JOOOOOOOOOE!!


Being a Christian game developer is a requirement to include biblical references, but unlike Wisdom Tree...Heck, Sounds like I'm repeating myself from the previous reviews. This game has very few biblical references as if it tries to be more discreet about its nature, but in the Bowling series of games they will even pass unadverted as you tap the X button to skip dialogues and go to the next boring bowling level or even finish the game.

As for the sound, there's now a less chiptune-ish, more average soundtrack, although its more of a few seconds loop that repeats over and over again. They have an idea, but they didn't considered to work on that a little further for better results.

(Sigh) Now you understand what I've mean with the local commercial comparison?
Project: Summer Ice Bowling is again another addition to the collection of "Christian" friendly games which while it tries to improve, it stumbles with critical flaws that ruins the overall product.
The only comfort will be that all the chapters for both girls will cost 10 bucks and that will mean around 100 quick trophies with a few Platinums. You can avoid them if you don't want to tarn your PS4/PS5 collection with trash games or pick'em for fast trophies, but don't be surprised if your brain leaves your head and is found ran over by a car while playing these games.



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Does someone needs to say "LEA HATES YOU"?
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STG Wikias: Thunder Force Wiki - Wikiheart Exelica - Ginga Force Wiki
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