Pure Pool is a very difficult game to review objectively because it is so specialised and has a reasonably niche appeal. Pure Pool is all about Pool – the game where you hit a ball into other balls in order to put them into holes on a table. If you have no interest in pool, it is probably best you stop reading this review now as Pure Pool will not convert you into a fan. It will not teach you how to play pool. It will not endear itself to you. Pure Pool is for the fans – the players who know the difference between a Bank Shot and a Cross Corner Shot – and this is one enjoyable and very polished pool simulator indeed.

It hits you right from the second that the game finishes loading and the camera pans through the pool hall en route to your table – the graphics and attention to detail in Pure Pool is astonishing. It feels weird to say that about a game about pool but it’s true. The way that the light reflects off of the near-photo-realistic balls, the ultra-high detail on the pool table cloth, the individual splinters and speckles on the pool cue, the chalk dust that blooms from the tip after a successful pot – It is gorgeous. Even the back drops, featuring blurry models of people having a chat and a drink, look realistic. Squint your eyes while playing Pure Pool and you can almost smell the Guinness, chalk and Steak McCoys of a real pool hall.




The game play has you look down the sights of your cue and the white ball. From here, magic guide lines show where the cue ball will go and, if you are close enough to see them, another set of guide lines which show the effects that your stroke will have on the first ball you hit. Using the left stick to move the position of the cue you then flick the right stick back and forward to apply the desired power. A small movement of the right stick will add a deft touch while a hard tap will smash it. You can also add spin to the ball by holding circle and moving the tip of the cue to hit the white ball in a different spot. From here, you follow the rules of the type of pool you are playing until you have a winner which is a cinematic experience as the screen darkens, heart beats gently thud in the back ground and the game slows to celebrate the final shot. The game is easy to play but difficult to master and the guide lines can make you feel like a grand master as you pull off fantastic shots.

Pure Pool has a surprisingly large selections of the variations on pool, split between 8-Ball and 9-Ball and then into standard, Killer, Checkpoint, Perfect Potter and others, all of which can be played on-line (live or via challenges) and offline.

The offline single player has a career mode which challenges you to beat a whole host of opponents that get incremental more difficult at a lot of different types of pool while also trying to complete three pre-defined challenges per match. The career mode is massive, with more than 100 matches, some of which are brutally difficult. Miss a shot and some of the computer controlled opponents will punish you dearly. It is a challenge, but a relaxed one. The campaign challenges your skill, gently at first and gradually begins to test you. Thankfully, the longer you play Pure Pool, the more you become accustomed to the controls, feeling and angles needed and there are no difficulty spikes which block your progress. The only issue with the offline modes is that the opponent can occasionally freeze up and take a strangely long time to take their shot. This is infrequent but when it does happen, it is a tad frustrating.



If you fancy a real test, Pure Pool’s online mode pits you up against human opponents in whatever type of pool game you desire. You can also issue challenges, like setting a fast time on Perfect Potter and testing your friends to try to beat it. These games can get tense, especially in Killer (where you start with 3 lives and each time you take a turn and fail to pot a ball, you lose a life). One of the more interesting aspects of Pure Pool is that, as you play, it builds up a profile of how you play, what shots you take, how often you add spin, what pockets your prefer etc, which is called your “DNA”. You can download this DNA and play against your friends, even when they aren’t online. A great idea which works really well.

I love pool and have tried a lot of pool simulators in the past and Pure Pool is the best by a large margin. VooFoo have taken Hustle Kings and dialed almost everything up to 11. It is slick, gorgeous, relaxing and ridiculously addictive. Hours will fly by in the blink of an eye. Late night sessions will turn into early morning matches as you play through stinging eyes but always having “just one more match”. My only criticisms are that the menus feel a little cheap, especially considering the high degree of polish in the rest of the game, the notification bar can be a little distracting and, even though the sound track is generally chilled and catchy, there is one particular song that would be more at home in God of War than Pure Pool. It would have also been nice to be able to add wagers to matches, similar to what appeared in Hustle Kings.

Pool pro Ralph Greenleaf coined the phrase “the Golden Angle”, where a pool player finds the perfect angle to pot a ball while also setting up the next shot with the cue ball. VooFoo have found the “Golden Angle” with Pure Pool. It is damn near perfect when it comes to a pool sim. Anybody who likes to take out their frustrations on the green felt will love Pure Pool and it offers hours and hours of value game play.

Pure Pool is available now on the PS4.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7nyNibDap8