Review: Pure Pool

Despite making a lukewarm first impression, Pure Pool has gone on to impress me. The plain presentation of the User Interface is blandly dull and purely functional to the point of flirting with being ugly. The notion of having an endless updating scroll of text announcing that strangers have just come online is as ill-conceived as it sounds. I do not know who thought this was a good idea, but this information is annoyingly useless and only serves as some point of amusement as it also means you are reliably informed each and every time the server goes down for even a second. Just because we live in an online connected world does not mean you have to leverage quirky or new ways of demonstrating this – especially when it only serves to make you look stupid.

Elevator music that could lull an elephant to sleep in a hurricane did not help the game’s initial appeal. Likewise, my initial impressions were not aided by long load times between new games and the length of time taken by AI characters, especially the dumb ones, to take a shot. Frequently you are left sounding like an angry sniper commander “TAKE THE SHOT! TAKE THE ****ING SHOT!” Fortunately this seems less of a problem as you advance through the AI levels, but in one extreme (and so far isolated) case, I had to concede the war of attrition with one computer controlled character seemingly refusing to attempt to play his way out of a near impossible snooker.

I also found the initial Pool table skin (the Pure Pool one viewable in screenshots below) to be distracting and not very suitable for playing pool on. Fortunately both the logo skin and the colour of the table cloth can be changed – which also revealed the first cute, if slightly useless, additional PS4 functionality of having the pad’s lightbar match the same colour of the table cloth. Plain red it is then.

As I alluded to at the start, once you get over these, fairly minor (but initially arresting) gripes there is a very solid pool game underneath. Perhaps that is to be expected with the developers behind the, generally well received, Hustle Kings on PS3 and Vita. However there are a number of stylistic choices that seem to differ between the two generations. Hustle Kings seemingly had a bit more attitude and character. While I generally agree with the idea of stripping it down to the “pure” core of the sport, the AI characters you encounter do seem somewhat soulless. As such, it can be all too easy to see your opponent for what they are, i.e. a programmed AI that knows all the perfect shots but makes calculated mistakes – as opposed to being a flawed human being. It would have been nice to see characters in the game that were fleshed out and displaying human traits, such as not liking a particular type of shot or illogically favouring corner pockets.

8-Ball and 9-Ball pool variants are available, although just the American version of 8-Ball rules are playable here. There are separate career modes for 8- and 9-Ball with five tournaments against increasingly proficient AI. Most of each tournament consists of 8- or 9-ball single round matches that culminate in a best of three, five or seven rounds. These are also broken up by the two other pool variations and four mini-game challenges;

• Killer – Players take alternate turns to pot, if anyone misses they lose one of their three lives. Lose all your lives and you lose. Lives can be regained by potting the black or multiple balls in one shot. A popular pub/bar variation, as many people can play at once and can be played for money. A fun game and a welcome inclusion in the Pure Pool line-up.

• Accumulator – Each ball is played in numbered order from 1 to 15 with points scored to the value that the ball is numbered with. So, the 1-Ball gives you one point, the 2-Ball gives you two and so on. A single point is awarded to your opponent if you foul or strike the wrong ball and accidentally potting a ball out of sequence will see your opponent gain the corresponding number of points, which rules out plants and in-offs – which make a tricky game have even more call for precision.

Mini-Game Challenges

• Perfect Potter – Pot as many balls in a row as possible without missing a shot.

• Checkpoint – Pot as many balls as possible in a strict time limit. More time is added for each successful pot.

• Speed Pot – Pot a set number of balls in a set time limit.

• Royal Rumble – Clear the table of all balls within the time limit, but new balls are added in pre-warned random positions at regular intervals.

Unlocking subsequent tournaments requires a certain numbers of stars – awarded for meeting certain win conditions, with up to three stars available for each level. Achieving the amount of stars necessary is made easier by inclusion of additional mini-game levels. These are set aside from the main path of progress but count towards your star total. Once you have won all five tournaments at amateur level then there are two more difficulty tiers to play through. Although it is unclear how or even if this is any more difficult than lower tiers as the AI levels of opponents are exactly the same. This is probably okay as the “Master” AI seen in the latter stages of the amateur level tournament will literally clear the table at almost every visit that they are not placed in a difficult snooker.

New cues are unlockable as you progress through the upgrade system, which is accelerated by any positive action in a match – for example potting multiple balls from the break or successfully potting a plant or long pot. However, it is again unclear exactly what difference this makes – I imagine it has a finer nib and so allows for more control while requiring more precision, but there is nothing to say this is the case with cues just being given generic names that relate to the level you are on – such as “Apprentice Cue”.

At first I thought the lack of overhead view – a view I am use to seeing in this style of game – was a missing feature, but I actually grew to favour its replacement. At any time when lining a shot up, you can press the “Stand Up” button, which allows you to take a step back and rotate around the table. This allows you to check out the angle of pots in a manner akin to real life, also allowing your view to sink into the pockets, allowing you to check the fine margins of whether that crucial 8 ball will squeeze past your opponents obstruction. While I had become accustomed to the overhead view being available in this sort of game, it is more abstract, as it is not a view of a pool table commonly seen when actually playing. The ability to spin around the table feels much more natural and much less likely to jar you away from “being” at the table. (N.B. I am not sure if this is the first time this change has been made in this genre, it may have just been the first time I have encountered it.)

The aiming mechanic involving the use of guidelines for object and cue ball is something we have seen for many years in this genre. I have often heard this criticised but yet to see a better way of doing this and Pure Pool’s version is refined to possibly being the best example of this. It does help judge fine cuts and shorter shots, but fades to give less guidance on longer pots. It seems fair, but the lines disappear when you Stand Up and this can make shots such as doubles trickier to line up. The slow motion that kicks in when you successfully win a game is initially a little jarring, but does become a most welcome sight as you finally beat a tricky opponent – not so much when on the receiving end.

I was worried that Pure Pool would not play well on the Vita as the game relies heavily on the use of the right analog stick, as this translates to your cuing action – but it played very well and I found it just as easy to get the variety of shots when playing via Remote Play.

Add in same-couch co-op that sees you passing the pad as you would a cue and with a number of online options, you end up with quite a lot of game to play. The developers estimate forty hours of gameplay and I can easily see it taking that long. I played to the completion of the first set of five tournaments from 8-Ball and most of the way through the 9-Ball tournaments – which allowed me to play all of the differing mini-game variations against the Amateur, Pro and Master levels of AI. I feel that this has allowed me to have a good idea of what to expect from the rest of the game.

Despite initial issues, Pure Pool does exactly what it says on the tin. This makes it very easy to chalk this up as a “must buy for fans of the genre”, but that is about as useful as recommending water to a man in a desert. With games such as GTA including a fairly well rounded pool mini-game I thought that Pure Pool would be a pretty tough sell, but I almost forgot how much more of a full game a pool game can be. At £40+ this would be really hard to recommend, but the £7.99 pricepoint it is selling at makes the recommendation to dive in much easier to make.

Tags: Angry Sniper Captain, Hustle Kings, Pool, Pure Pool