Review - Pure Pool
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Review by Phil Cole
Format reviewed on PS4
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Developers; VooFoo Studios
Publisher; Ripstone Format; PS4, Xbox One, PC Release Date;Out Now |
In my youth I spent a lot of time down the pub playing pool, escaping the responsibilities of the rest of life, focussing on downing balls swiftly. Fast forward twelve years and, in a very different place, would I find escapism in Voofoo Studios newest title, Pure Pool?
Initial impressions upon selecting the game from the dashboard are… not great. There is a longer than you would expect loading time to even get into the game, and once loaded you have to wait out the unskippable publisher and developer logos before you can interact with anything.
Initial impressions upon selecting the game from the dashboard are… not great. There is a longer than you would expect loading time to even get into the game, and once loaded you have to wait out the unskippable publisher and developer logos before you can interact with anything.
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Once in, however, and you are met with a very nice looking pool table with a dynamic background of a large pool hall/bar type setup with some mild ambient noise and… oh.. wait, what’s that?
“SgtMiller is online” But I don’t know anyone called th… “DuckfaceDave is online” Who the? “Bananarama is online” What in bloody hell is going on?! It would appear that, once you’re in Pure Pool, it really wants you to know that there are other people around the world playing the game and that you can play with them. So much so that, whichever game mode you are in, it will bombard you with constant login prompts of people you don’t know. Whilst it’s just a small message at the top of the screen it’s incredibly distracting. |
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There are 4 different game modes (8 ball, 9 ball, killer – Each miss of a ball loses you a life, each pot after the first gives you one, and accumulator – you earn points for potting them) and 4 challenges (speed pot – pot all balls as fast as you can, checkpoint – pot as many balls within time limit, perfect potter – pot as many as possible without missing one, Royal rumble – clear the table as quickly as possible while extra balls are added to the table at random) which give you a nice wide variety of activities to undertake. The challenges are single player affairs and your scores are logged on a leaderboard, but any of the 4 game modes can be played both online against random “quick play” opponents or friends as well as offline.
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The pool gameplay itself is solid, the balls have a nice weight to them and the physics are pretty realistic. Hitting a ball at full pelt into one of the pockets can lead to it bouncing back out and robbing you of a pot, and you are able to add spin to the cue ball, curving it and chipping it for some more impressive pots (though beware, as you can chip the ball off the table entirely!). After a while you can definitely begin to get to grips with the consistent model and cueing and ball on ball interactions are predictable. You play the game with the thumbsticks, with the left aiming your cue and the right controlling cueing strength. It’s a tried and tested control method that will feel instantly at home to most players and will allow anyway to quickly get to grips with it.
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There are also three difficulty modes, which alter how much help is given. The default level is amateur, and you get the expected white line to your target, along with lines showing the direction the struck ball will travel and where your cue ball will ricochet off to. Intermediate difficulty merely shortens these lines, whilst Master difficulty removes them entirely, providing the hardest challenge and the purest pool experience.
The offline game modes do suffer from the seemingly unfair AI. Even the “amateur” ranked opponents that you face can be scarily good and due to the one sided nature of the game it does mean there will be times when you are sat watching your opponent pot ball after ball. This wouldn’t be too much of an issue in itself except that it can take a fair while for the computer to decide on which shot it will take, which leads to you swiftly becoming bored. |
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In comparison the online, real human, gameplay is much quicker. Matchmaking was very swift (as it should be, what with all these hundreds of players logging in all the time…) and the game was free of lag and, in my case, victory.
There are a few other features like offline leagues and you can start your own, but at the end of the day, you’re going to be playing lots of games of pool. And if you like pool, whether in real life or digitally, then this is a very pretty, very accurate portrayal of the game that allows you to play alone as well as with friends and strangers. If you can put up with all the distractions.
There are a few other features like offline leagues and you can start your own, but at the end of the day, you’re going to be playing lots of games of pool. And if you like pool, whether in real life or digitally, then this is a very pretty, very accurate portrayal of the game that allows you to play alone as well as with friends and strangers. If you can put up with all the distractions.
Wrap up
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Intentional Innuendo Count: 3
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3/5 |
Game provided by Publisher
Screenshots provided courtesy of Publisher
Screenshots provided courtesy of Publisher
