The Sims Pool 2D

We've all been there: You've put your 50p down, but a pair of meatheads are ignoring your coin and racking up their seventh consecutive game, and letting them know whose turn it is probably isn't a good call – unless being bent over and used as a cue rack is your idea of fun. But at least you've got your mobile phone, right? Time to fire up The Sims Pool, then.

When you first start the game, you're asked to create a character, which basically involves selecting one of the three available Sim men or three women and changing the colour of their hair and clothes. We were a little disappointed by how limited the character creation is, especially considering the amount of fiddling you can usually do in Sims games.

Still, once you've created a character, you can play some decent pool. You have the choice of playing a game of US 8 ball (spots and stripes), UK 8 ball (red and yellow and give two shots away for a foul) or good old 9 ball (sink the balls in order, finishing with the 9). There's also a Challenge mode, but more on that later.

Playing a game of pool is a breeze thanks to the simple controls. You can use either the directional arrows or the key-pad. Up, down, left, right and the action button are all you need, and shots are set up in three stages.

First, you rotate your cue to get the angle right, then click the action button to set the type of spin you want to put on the ball. Finally, you select the shot power by stopping the power bar in the desired place, and that's it. Absolutely anybody can pick the game up and understand it in seconds, but it still manages to retain a lot of the subtleties found in real-life pool, such as ball spin and getting the shot angles just right to follow on with another pot.

Challenge mode is essentially a list of trick shots to work through, giving you tasks such as 'pot three balls in one shot'. It's an excellent little addition, but the list of challenges is pretty short. Winning matches and completing challenges unlocks fairly lame bonuses including new cue and cloth colours, but it also increases the popularity of your character, adding a very small role-playing element to the game.

Graphically, The Sims Pool does the job - the action always remains clear - with its top-down camera angle giving the best possible view of the table. The sounds are a bit naff, although at least the dodgy porno music only plays in the menus and not during the game.

By far our biggest gripe with The Sims Pool however is its lack of a tournament mode, which means all of your pool is played out over single matches. Quite why this was left out of the game is beyond us, because this sort of omission would be unforgivable on a console. But no, this mobile game doesn't have a tournament mode, and that's a crying shame.

Never mind, The Sims Pool is a decent pool game – just don't expect to play it for too long.