Trickshot Pool
|
| Trickshot Pool

John Virgo is a cannily deceptive individual. He's fairly short, somewhat rotund and sports a strange, wispy Noel Edmunds-esque beard. But man, can he play or what? Those intricate trickshots he used to put together on the BBC's Big Break were awesome. Apparently, these Zen-like skills provide him with ample kudos when it comes to the ladies, too.

But enough of the rock-and-roll of snooker – here we're looking at its close cousin, pool, the game of choice for the pub-crawler. That said, with Trickshot Pool you might learn to play like Virgo himself, by brushing up on your otherwise rusty cue skills even when you're not in the pub.

Trickshot Pool has the unenviable task of entering a field of mobile gaming that's already packed to the rafters with offerings, some good, some average and some plain awful. Can it stand out?

The heart of the game is to place bets on your chances of successfully performing any given trickshot in your allotted time of sixty seconds. Pull off the required shot and you win your bet, with harder shots bringing bigger rewards. Alternatively, you can just play a standard game of pool.

The game's learning curve is well-pitched, giving you progressively harder trickshots to perform. In the 8-ball and 9-ball competitions, the AI opponents are suitably forgiving in the early stages (that is, they don't pot everything in sight, and even the best aren't unbeatable if you take the time to perfect your skills), enabling you to master your abilities as well as a control system that feels somewhat sluggish at first.

Visually everything is adequately big and clear, with the standard top-down view of proceedings featuring a detailed table and decent enough animation. The big plus is that the table pretty much fills the whole screen, meaning the balls are also of a good size (ooh, I say). But even given the fairly well-executed zoom (which helps you plan your trajectory to the finest degree), it's fair to say the game doesn't demonstrate anything truly groundbreaking.

Indeed, with the likes of current King of the Cues, Ronnie O'Sullivan Snooker on the market, as well as the equally good-looking 3D Pool Urban Hustle, Trickshot Pool already feels somewhat dated. In comparison with those titles, it's very notably a 3D-free zone.

Audio-wise, Trickshot Pool again plays simple. On our Nokia 6280 test phone there was no music of any kind – no pleasant jingles – in-game, menu or otherwise. The sound effects, meanwhile, consist of minimal and obligatory bleeps signalling when a ball has been potted.

The game does go up a level with the two-player option, where you can take on a friend (or, indeed, an enemy) in either a trickshot competition or a nice relaxing bout of regular 8- or 9-ball pool. It's a shame that there's no Bluetooth compatibility, though. Infospace, can we have that in the sequel?

Trickshot Pool is solid if unspectacular, a pool game in its purist form. It makes a decent fist of recreating the pub-game feel, and trying to work out the best angle for the perfect shot for the umpteenth time will certainly get the old grey matter pulsing. But you're unlikely to keep at it for any real length of time.

Trickshot Pool

Faced with quality 3D rivals, the accessibility of Trickshot Pool's 2D world is just about enough – for now
Score
Chris Maddox
Chris Maddox
Liverpool fan, Chris, loves to watch the mighty Redmen play. In between matches however, he's an avid mobile games reviewer for Pocket Gamer. Chris has assured us that he only thinks about Liverpool FC a mere 80 per cent of the day.