For me, I want to take a very even rolling ball (one that's clean through the fronts and not too strong off the dry), take my hand out of the ball and play the lanes close to how you attack Cheetah.  Go as straight through the front part of the lane as possible (and as close to the gutter as the lanes will allow) and control the break point.  You have more hand than me, so maybe hooking it is an option, but I get a ton of over/under when hooking it on Viper.

I will be bowling on Viper for the first time this coming Wednesday. Would you recommend balls with surface to start and then less surface as the lanes break down, or just surface/less surface all the way through?

Thanks for the information, everyone. It looks like I'm going to end up getting my Taboo Spare drilled up for this one. Was going to save it as kind of a collector's deal for myself, but eh. think the Midnight Vibe's gonna be my go-to with the way everyone's talking, considering it's the weakest I honestly have that I won't have to change thumb inserts out of to make it PBA legal.

I hate this pattern. I was averaging in the 180's on the pbax league until this pattern. The only decent thing I could find is using a bunch of speed and starting from 20 down 10 to 10 and go from there. Outside of that and standing right seemed impossible and moving looks good but was very difficult and uncontrollable. Can't wait to try it again this summer in the pbax league.

No polish, all the pba patterns play best with some surface. If you insist on polish, you better be a shot maker or what till the pattern really develops definite swing & hold. Personally, I prefer weak pins with surface.

Well, I didn't exactly light them up on the Viper tonight. I attribute a lot of that to my poor bowling. I felt like I had a look early and then just threw some really bad shots (and whiffed some spares).
I started with a 503C drilled weak and finished at 2000. My 503C plays very straight for me, so it seemed like a good control ball to start with. I played straight up about 6 board and had a good look, but - of course - had to make good shots. Unfortunately, I made three bad shots on a row on the left lane and opened each time, so that sunk my chances of throwing a decent game. After Game one, I switched to a Nomad Solid at 3000 that is drilled stronger. I only had a good look with it when I lofted over the heads. I moved in about a board with my feet and targeted 7-8 board still playing pretty straight up. There was a decent shot there if I allowed the ball to read the back of the pattern, but I make more bad tug shots and missed a few more spares.
Moved one pair to the right and this pair was hooking a bit more, so I made about a 3/2 adjustment and tried to give the ball a little belly. The look wasn't bad, but I made a few bad shots at the finish to only shoot 183. Also, my Teflon tape came off of my Dexter #1 heel, so I lost my slide for about 5-6 frames until I could get another piece from the pro shop. This caused me to force the ball more than I wanted to, so I wasn't getting the read like I would have liked.
I tried playing the same line the last game but the ball started getting jumpy, so I made a huge leap left (12 left with my feet, 10 left with my eyes) and pulled out my Hyroad drilled fairly weak. I played about 10 board at the break point and found a pretty nice shot there and finished with XX 9/ 9/ XXX7. I only shot 201 because of my struggles early in the game.
Overall, only 702 for the night for four games. Since this was my first time on Sport/PBA pattern, I'm not going to beat myself up about it. I knew that I would need time to get comfortable with the shot and learn to find what works best for me. This whole summer league will be training for me. My spare-shooting has always been streaky and I am currently on a bad streak, so the missed spares didn't really surprise me.
Anyway, it was fun. Next week is Tokyo pattern for me.