3 in 1 Arcade Pub Pack

Pubs may be about booze, but they've obviously got a lot more going for them, too. Some have pool tables. Some have darts boards. Some have beer-bellied groups of old boys with camaraderie strong enough to bring a tear to your eye.

However, some people don't get to indulge in the heartwarming experience that is the local, common or garden pub. Vagrants, for instance. And won't somebody think of the children?

If you are one of these tragically misaligned individuals, look no further! The 3 in 1 Arcade Pub Pack offers everything you're missing from the pub environment. Well, sort of. The game includes three renditions of some pub favourites – namely snooker, darts and the fruit machine – and there's certainly less chance of getting in a fight than being in a real pub.

First impressions are pretty good. You select your activity of choice from a swishy menu that sees game icons sliding attractively from one side of the screen to another. Getting into each of the games, the presentation remains fairly solid, too. Visuals are quite simple, but are clear and definite representations of their respective real-life counterparts.

Unfortunately, in gameplay terms things are a little more patchy. In cramming three games that have generally been full titles rather than a part of a compendium in a single product, a certain degree of wing-clipping has taken place in the Pub Pack.

Snooker is viewed from a top-down perspective, and the whole table is crammed onto the screen making everything feel a little squished. Thankfully, you are given both a standard quick method of changing the angle of your cue and a slower, more accurate method (using '*' and '#') which certainly helps things.

After aiming and pressing '5', you have to hit '5' again to choose the power of the shot. So far, so good, then, but ball physics are distinctly lacking. Even when you whack the ball at full pelt, you never feel like you make that much of an impact. The result is that things start to feel a little drab.

It's also ridiculously easy to pot the white, while sinking the colours feels more difficult. When the main aim of the game is to finish with a certain number of lives that deplete whenever you commit a foul, this gets somewhat annoying.

In the darts game, you get to play 501 against a computer opponent. Again, gameplay is fairly simple, and again it's the feel of the game that is a little faulty. It's pure one-thumb gaming – a little target circles the circumference of the board and when you press '5', the target starts moving in and out of the board. The target actually moves quite slowly, so there's little sense of skill involved, and with a bit of patience it becomes very easy to hit your mark every time.

Considering the amount of times that snooker and darts have been translated to game form, it's perhaps a little surprising that it's actually the third offering – the one-armed bandit – that becomes the star of the show.

Admittedly, it's more a desk lamp with a star-shaped shade than a supernova, but it's still a nice little slot sim that manages to pack in a surprising level of addictiveness into its pixels. After all, there are nudges, holds, prize multipliers and a virtual stack of coins to keep an eye on – what more could you want in a mobile slot machine?

3-in-1 Arcade Pub Pack is a patchy affair, but it's worth considering that you'll be paying a third of a full price title for each of the games. For anyone that spends any length of time at the keypad, you'd be better off buying separate games, but if you're looking for a very occasional quick blast, this is much better than finding ash in your bar nibbles.

3 in 1 Arcade Pub Pack

3-in-1 Arcade Pub Pack is fine for occasional quick-blast gaming sessions, but will disappoint anyone looking for more
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