Midnight Pool

Despite the title, Midnight Pool won't likely have you burning the late night oil. This beautifully rendered attempt at billiards doesn't have the chops to keep you playing all night long, but it has enough substance to entertain for a few odd moments.

Controls make or break any pool game and it's no exception here. The touchscreen enables intuitive control, but also introduces complication when it comes to matters of precision. You take shots with your cue by setting the horizontal angle manually, as well as the vertical angle and where you'd like to hit the cue ball. Taking your shot involves holding a finger down on the cue, pulling it back to get the desired amount of power, and then sliding it forward to hit the cue ball. It's fairly simple and a quick tutorial teaches you the basics.

A camera button at the bottom of the screen allows you to change the view before a shot, which is easy enough with taps of the screen. The controls show weakness, unfortunately, when it comes to setting the cue ball on the table following a scratch or foul. A miniature dot designating the cue ball's intended position is entirely too small to move about the screen with any sort of precision. In turn, this makes it difficult to line up a decent shot.

Midnight Pool racks up three modes: Arcade, Story, and Multiplayer. Arcade lets you jump into a one-off game of pool using American, UK, or 9-ball rules. Additionally, you can try your hand at special challenges that require specific manoeuvres on the table such as avoiding a ball or hitting one ball before landing another. These are also featured in Story mode between matches, although they're entirely optional.

Surprisingly enough, Arcade mode stands as more of an attraction than the single player story. As it goes, you follow in your daddy's footsteps as a great pool player and dart across the US in an effort to make a name for yourself. You're welcome to use either US or UK 8-ball rules as you take on a handful of characters in gambling matches. Money earned from winning games gets turned right around to place bets on new games. In short, you have to accrue enough money to place large enough bets in later matches. You aren't able to spend money purchasing items or anything of the sort because they don't exist. It's disappointing considering you rack up tens of thousands of dollars and can't throw around a cent of it.

The only sense of progression comes from characters unlocked whenever you defeat a rival. Unfortunately, that isn't too many. Story mode recycles the same handful of figures for round after round of competition. Their skills dramatically improve between meets and the same dude that couldn't sink a ball in Alabama is lining up a 7-hit streak in New York two games later. It's rather unrealistic, which is ironic given the game's attention to physical accuracy on the table.

As for multiplayer, Midnight Pool only offers hot-seat play but that's okay. Billiards wouldn't make for the best of portable online experiences given its deliberate pacing. Head-to-head competition with a friend on a single handset is fine in this case.

Were it not for the precision problems and mediocre story mode, Midnight Pool could have ended up solid instead of striped. The great graphics and hot seat multiplayer are good enough, though, to slide this decent game into your pocket.