Real Pool
- January 01, 2000 00:00 AM PST
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In a scene from The Color of Money, Paul Newman upbraids Tom Cruise for a tacky display in a pool hall. "What was that voodoo back there?" he growls. "That wasn't pool. You dropped your pants!"
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That sums up this pool enthusiast's reaction to the clunky mess that is Real Pool. Real Pool offers games of 8-Ball, 9-Ball, Straight Pool, Rotation, Carom Billiards, and Bumper Pool, and at first glance, it looks hot. Too bad it feels about three years out of date.
Oh, the ball-and-table graphics are quite good, with moody shadows and realistic mapping. But you can forget the comparatively elegant key-driven interface of, say, Virtual Pool 2. Instead, the screen is hedged in by constricting panels of controls, half of which are effectively useless. Why force the player to cursor-over to click on view-changing buttons that waste valuable space when a key command would suffice?
Eighteen computer opponents can be "sized up" from photo-bios. They should add personality, but they don't. Nobody's likely to care who the opponents are, or if they're good or bad or hustlers, because nothing is at stake--a crime Virtual Pool also commits.
Logistically, the game is a nightmare. The basic table view seems slightly fish-eyed and the optional Wide Angle View offers further distortion. Once you aim and commit to a shot, there seems to be no intuitive way of backing out. What Real Pool calls "angle" isn't cue-angle elevation--which, incidentally, is jacked up way too high--but "English" (the spin one puts on the cue ball). Physics are strictly Flatland (no jump shots) and the minimal aiming device merely indicates the pocket for the target ball, not its degree-by-degree direction.
The game even calls the pockets "holes," which is just?vulgar.
