Pool Party Review

Pool Party Review
Scratch.
by Bozon

September 21, 2007 - We all know there are games out there that exist strictly to make money, and in no way are given a large enough budget or long enough development window to create something that's actually worth playing, let alone spending hard-earned cash for. With the recent success of Wii, fans of Nintendo's new motion-based system will simply have to get used to the fact that big sales bring huge libraries, and not everything is going to be worth the time or money. Pool Party is just one of those titles.



Published by SouthPeak Interactive, Pool Party is designed to be a semi-customizable game of traditional pool. The environments are extremely generic, the characters are about as forgettable as possible, and the game types and options are exactly what you'd expect from a budget Pool game. You can play single player against a computer, or go multiplayer with a friend, playing in a variety of pool games including a practice mode, time attack, bonus 9-ball, 8-ball, 9-ball, 10-ball, 15-ball, straight pool, rotation pool, blackjack, full snooker, short snooker (10-ball), and killer.



Each of the main pool games allow for two-player modes, while time attack and practice are only one player. Aside from that you've got a few options to change things up, including eight rooms, 11 tables, five ball sets, ten cues, six characters, 31 songs, and three different table speeds. Select your options, play the game, rinse, and repeat.

That's the entire game. No player customization, no attribute boosts for different equipment, and no campaign or tournament modes. It's literally just a step above the Wii Play pool mini-game.

What isn't a step above Wii Play, however, is the control, which does very little to make this game a Wii title at all. The entire interface is all handled via IR, but once you get into the main game things get far too simplistic for what we'd expect nearly a year after system launch. You can either control your aim via IR by holding A, or move the cursor around with the analog stick on the nunchuk Holding Z and moving your left hand controls a rubber-banded camera, while C will change to specific camera views.

The shooting, however, is a total mess. Once you line up your shot you'll hold the B trigger, and rather than just shooting like Wii Play allows, having your pull-back determine the power of the shot, you'll instead tweak an on-screen power bar with the analog stick, and then stab the Wii-mote forward to "shoot." It's weak, it feels totally tacked on, and there's nothing that makes it an actual Wii experience. Your Wii-mote action doesn't factor into the shot at all, so it's basically just a button press mapped to the remote itself.
A great place for shooting pool or hiding dead bodies.
To make matters worse, the computer A.I. boarders between moronic and simply amazing, taking a ton of time to "think" about a shot, including an on-screen status percentage bar, and then will pull off three, four, or five-wall shots, sinking balls that would be nearly impossible in real life.

As for the audio/visual package, Pool Party is a mess. The interface screens are extremely basic, and the in-game visuals are extremely primitive, easily surpassed by Xbox Live Arcade games, or barely pushing above what something like the original PlayStation could do. Character art is extremely generic, music is about as standard as can be, and what limited VO and sound effects included have a tin-like, low quality sound to them. Web games have stronger overall presentation than this.


Closing Comments
Pool Party had an extremely silent release, and for good reason. The game is about on par with a chop-shop web game, and does very little to use the Wii controls at all. Gameplay is extremely basic, computer A.I. is both moronic and genius at the same time, and the audio and visuals are like something from a late PSX game. It should be obvious at this point – if not far before this review even hit – that Pool Party is a quick-cash cop-out, and is in no way up to Wii standards.