Pool

We Brits love our pub sports. Darts, pool, having a fight while three sheets to the wind... we relish them all. Plus we love them on mobile phones. Pool titles have been popular on regular handsets for years.

So it's no surprise to see the iPhone getting its first pool game early in the App Store's life. What's more, the potential for iPhone pool is intriguing, given the touchscreen control mechanic.

Pool is one of the first and offers a top-down perspective. You can play it in three ways. First, there's the single player mode, which is the equivalent of occupying a pub pool table alone, pocketing the balls in order in as few shots as possible.

Then there's Human vs. iPhone mode, where you play an 8-Ball or 9-Ball match against the computer. Finally, Human vs. Human mode offers hotseat multiplayer, which is to say you pass around the handset.

There's a settings menu to set things like whether your aiming direction line is on, the difficulty level of the iPhone-controlled player, and how long matches last (from one game to best-of-15 marathons).

And that's it, as far as options go. This is part of the problem with Pool: it's a bit too basic. On regular mobile phones, most pool games offer tournaments, different people to play against, trick-shots and other features to hold your interest. There's none of that here. Pool is just what its name implies: a serviceable pool game with no extra trimmings.

It plays fairly well though, with a simple control scheme that involves tapping and dragging on the screen to line up your shot, and then sliding back on a power-bar at the side of the screen to set the power.

It does illustrate one problem with touchscreen controls, which is that when you've lined up your shot and remove your thumb or finger from the screen, you sometimes nudge the aiming line while doing it.

Thankfully, there's a couple of soft-buttons at the bottom of the screen letting you adjust the aim in small increments, which can be used to correct this. However, far more disappointing is the lack of an option to add spin to your shots - something you'd think would be essential.

Otherwise, it looks fairly good, with crisp top-down 2D visuals and a good clacking sound effect for the balls. That said, the striped balls are a bit disconcerting, because they're just 2D circles and there's no sense of them actually 'rolling'.

Pool isn't a bad game by any means. It's a pick-up-and-play title that lets you knock a few around to kill some time. However, the lack of elements around the core gameplay - even rudimentary tournaments - and the lack of spin make it feel less like a game, and more like a technical demo. It proves that touchscreen pool can work on the iPhone, but now someone needs to make a better game out of it.