Reviews / previews
In a scene from The Color of Money, Paul Newman
upbraids Tom Cruise for a tacky display in a pool
hall. "What was that voodoo back there?" he growls.
"That wasn't pool. You dropped your pants!"
That sums up this pool enthusiast's reaction to the
clunky mess that is Real Pool. Real Pool offers
games of 8-Ball, 9-Ball, Straight Pool, Rotation,
Carom Billiards, and Bumper Pool, and at first
glance, it looks hot. Too bad it feels about three
years out of date.
Oh, the ball-and-table graphics are quite good, with
moody shadows and realistic mapping. But you can
forget the comparatively elegant key-driven interface
of, say,
Virtual Pool
2. Instead,
the screen
is hedged
in by
constricting
panels of
controls,
half of
which are
effectively
useless.
Why force the player to cursor-over to click on
view-changing buttons that waste valuable space
when a key command would suffice?
Eighteen computer opponents can be "sized up"
from photo-bios. They should add personality, but
they don't. Nobody's likely to care who the
opponents are, or if they're good or bad or hustlers,
because nothing is at stake--a crime Virtual Pool also commits.
Logistically, the game is a nightmare. The basic table view seems slightly
fish-eyed and the optional Wide Angle View offers further distortion. Once
you aim and commit to a shot, there seems to be no intuitive way of backing
out. What Real Pool calls "angle" isn't cue-angle elevation--which,
incidentally, is jacked up way too high--but "English" (the spin one puts on
the cue ball). Physics are strictly Flatland (no jump shots) and the minimal
aiming device merely indicates the pocket for the target ball, not its
degree-by-degree direction.
The game even calls the pockets "holes," which is justvulgar.-- Chris Hudak / GamePro
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