Virtual Pool 3 review
(This game was released in 2000 but you can still buy it)
This game is so realistic it could be a teaching simulator. Playing Virtual Pool 3 will seriously improve your real game. However, there are several annoyances, which leave it falling a bit short of perfection.
Playing Pool
Using the mouse to control the cue gives a real hands-on feel to the game. When it’s your turn, you are taken to the table with your cue poised over the cue ball. You just move the mouse to fine-tune your aim. Taking your shot is a simple matter of pressing the assigned stroke button, drawing back the mouse, and pushing it forward as hard or as gently as you like. This emulates the feel of playing pool better then any other method.
As you move the mouse back and forward, the cue on the screen draws back and forward too and you get an accurate idea of how hard you will be hitting the ball. You won’t strike the ball until you actually push the cue into it, so you can slide the cue back and forth as much as you like to get a feel for it - just like in the real game. This control over the cue is excellent, and I quickly got the hang of playing safe behind another ball by just tickling the white up a few inches.
Moving the mouse up and down without pressing the stroke key will change the view of the table to simulate how much you are bending over your cue. It is easy to manipulate the view of your cue and the table to that of the view in your normal playing style. The whole feel of the game in strikingly realistic.
Game Choices & Venues
There are several different environments to play in and tables to play on. You can choose between 21 different games and it should go without saying that you can play against the computer or with human players. The game choices include all of the variations of Pool (there are a lot more than you think) using either American or British rules. Also available are Pocket Billiards, Cribbage, and Snooker. The Snooker option is a great and an unexpected bonus in a Pool game.
You can play Snooker on a full sized snooker table or on a large Pool table. Playing it on the Pool table is great because the full sized table feels just like a real one and it’s more difficult to pot balls. Surprisingly though, playing Snooker on the smaller table can prove tricky in the early stages of the game. This is because there are so many balls in an artificially small space that finding a clear shot can be difficult until enough balls have been potted out of the way.
There are several locations to play in, each with their own tables to play. The locations include a garage, a bar, a couple of pool halls, a castle and a Malibu mansion. These are 3D environments but unless you have a powerful enough computer (Pentium II) and a good 3D card it will slow the balls down and introduce jerkiness to the game. You can turn off many features including these 3D background environments if your computer can’t handle them all.
Playing for money (Career mode) and taking on the big boss
I really enjoy playing for money in this game. If you are just playing the computer it adds an extra interest. You start with $50 and you’ll have to rough it at first by playing all the local losers for small stakes. You start playing on a small pool table in the garage. If you want to move on to different locations, with a more skilled group of opponents and higher stakes, then you’ll need to challenge the local boss. He is the best player around and armed with the bees-knees in Pool cues. Once you are good enough to wipe the floor up with him you can unlock new areas and move on to richer pickings.
This is a great idea and adds an extra dimension to the game by giving targets to achieve and rewards for achieving them similar to an arcade game. The ultimate challenge to your Pool playing skills will be to play “The Black Widow” at her private beach house.
As soon as you’ve hustled a few people out of their money you can buy a better cue, which presumably allows you to play slightly better. I haven’t noticed any real difference in how they play yet but I’ve only bought the next cue up so far. You can download extra cues from the Internet and even customise them.
Internet & LAN play
You can play over the Internet or a LAN network. On the Internet you can use a free website to participate in organised tournaments and various leagues. There is even a worldwide ranking ladder. If you want to show off you can get your mates to log in as spectators which sounds like a great idea to me.
The multiplayer online utility Gamespy Arcade is included on the CD, which deals with online multiplayer games. I have no use for it personally as I’m not interested in online playing so I haven’t installed it. You don’t need to install it unless you want to play online.
Improving Your Real and Your Virtual game
After just several hours with Virtual Pool, I had learned and advanced more than I had in the previous 6 months of playing on a real table with real people. There are some really useful tools to help improve your play. These are only available in the practice and trick-shot modes. You can use the undo feature to repeatedly take the same shot until you pot it or until you get the cue ball where you want it. You can practice taking the same shot with differing amounts of side or power to learn what effects it has on the shot.
Ghost ball teaching aid
If you are familiar with Pool or Snooker you will have heard of a “plant” which is the easiest shot in the game. In its easiest form, this is where two balls are touching each other and both lined up with a pocket. Hitting the first ball will send the second into the pocket as sure as night follows day. In the practice and trick-shot modes, pressing “g” will toggle on a ghost ball. This will appear in front of the object ball in exactly the right position for a plant into the pocket you are aiming for. This is a wonderful tool because if you hit the ghost ball dead centre, (the cue ball actually passes right through) it will always pot the object ball. This imaginary ball technique is what professional players use and I first heard of it in a Steve Davis tutorial video. However, in the real game, it is a bit harder to imagine the ghost ball, but it does work.
In practice mode, I toggle the ghost ball on to check how accurate my aim is after I’ve lined my shot up manually. Another technique is to turn the ghost ball on first, line up the shot to hit it dead centre then press “g” to turn it off. You can then see how the shot looks without the ghost ball and learn to judge playing that type of shot without it.
Aiming line teaching aid
Turning on an aiming line is another useful tool to show exactly what will happen to the balls when you take your shot. Putting topspin, backspin, or side on the cue ball can dramatically affect the path of the ball and you can use this tool to learn how to control the cue ball - which is the key to being a proficient player. With this feature turned on, a dotted line will show the exact path the balls will take until they come to a standstill.
Computer suggestions
Finally, there is the strangely named Kibitz shot where the computer can suggest the best shot to play. This will help improve your tactical play.
Videos
There are tutorial videos to watch, which feature the one-time world number 1 women’s Pool player, Jeanette Lee (aka The Black Widow) taking real shots and talking us through them. She is heavily featured in the promotion of Virtual Pool 3. The video examples range from the basics to the hardest shot of all, The Masse’, which is very impressive. The Masse’ shot is where you raise the cue to such an angle that you are striking the cue ball virtually straight down from above. Coupled with side, and hit correctly and at the right pace, it can cause the cue ball to swerve round corners spectacularly. You may never see this shot played in a lifetime of playing pool so maybe you could master it and impress the lads down at the local.
The real beauty of these videos is that when a shot has been shown, you can click on “try shot” and the video layout will be replicated exactly on the playable table. The cue is already lined up perfectly to take the shot. You can now practice these shots as much as you like by using the undo button. To demonstrate just how difficult the Masse’ shot actually is I can tell you it took me about a dozen tries to make it when I tried it in Virtual Pool 2 - despite everything being set up perfectly. This is because in this, as in many other shots, the pace of the cue ball affects its path so you have to hit it with exactly the right power to pull it off.
Problems and Complaints
On my system, for some unknown reason the videos don’t work from within the game although I can play them from the CD using Explorer. This is the only problem I’ve had with the function of the software but there are several annoyances, which I will explain.
Poor help
There is no proper instruction book, only a cumbersome online help system on the CD. To access it you press help from the options. This minimises the game and loads up Internet Explorer.
Several times, Internet Explorer has simply tried to access the Internet and because I’m not connected, I receive a “can’t find server error.” When it correctly loads the help file from the CD it is in the form of a web page.
The help is good, just awkward to use and not intuitive at all. If you press help in a particular part of a game you expect to find help pertinent to that part, but instead you are always taken to the same place and have to find the correct help section you need yourself. This unnecessarily lets down Virtual Pool 3.
No chalk
This is a minor point, but an integral part of this type of game is putting chalk on your cue. If you don’t put enough on you will miscue. I used to own a Snooker game on the Amiga computer several years ago where you had to keep putting chalk on your cue at intervals. If you forgot you would miscue. It would be a nice touch to be able to put chalk on your cue and hear the sound effect of doing so - just like the real thing. I realise some may find this annoying but it would be easy to allow the feature to be turned off if required.
The most annoying thing in the game
This award goes to the calling a shot method which is a pain. When playing Snooker for example, if you’ve just potted a red and need to go for a colour you have to nominate which colour you are attempting to pot. This is fine, but if you aim 100% full ball for a colour, spend time lining it up and start drawing the mouse back, it immediately jumps to an overhead view when you attempt to hit the cue ball. A box pops up asking which colour you are aiming for. Then, when clicking on the colour you want (which was blatantly obvious anyway) instead of taking you back to the table, you have to click on an OK box before you can take your shot.
There is no logical reason why it can’t ask which colour you are aiming for only when it is not obvious. In addition, when it does ask, why can’t it just let you get on with your shot after you click on the ball?
Computer Requirements and possible problems
I play on a Pentium II Celeron 333mz computer with an 8 Meg 3D card and I have all the backgrounds turned off to keep the game fast. This is perfectly adequate as the backgrounds are really only trimmings when it boils down to it. The minimum recommended system is a Pentium 233mz with 32 Meg RAM, 200MB free hard disk space and at least a 4x CD drive. Windows 95, 98 or 2000.
The recommended specification, which is often the more realistic minimum for good game play is a Pentium II 400 with 16MB Video hardware Accelerator but as I say, it works fine for me on my Pentium II 333mz
The game can be run without a 3D card if absolutely necessary using software mode.
Summary
Virtual Pool 3 is an excellent game and I highly recommend it. If you already have Virtual Pool 2, this one doesn’t really play any better, but if you love playing you may appreciate all the extra features and the Snooker option.
Written by Andy(ArT)Trigg on April 14th, 2008 with
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