Πρόσφατες κριτικές από τον Roenie

The butt (that's the thicc end) of the cue is always way up in the air, you can't lower it enough so you are always cueing way down toward the table by at least 35 degrees. Every IRL pool and snooker player knows you can't play like that because any side spin on the ball is going to pull it off line immediately. And that's exactly what happens in Pool Nation FX. Deflection/squirt was not implemented, so there's no initial cue ball move in the other direction either that IRL would compensate for this issue at least in part depending on the speed of the shot and amount of side applied.

To make matters even worse there is also far too much curve on cue ball path when side spin is applied. This applies to both pool and snooker but I have the most experience with the latter IRL so I'll use that as an example. If you play a breakoff shot in snooker the way you would IRL the ball will curve so much you will miss the pack of reds entirely. To hit the outer red you have to aim to clip the pink!! (So about a foot more left than IRL). Hitting the cue ball out of center adds way too much spin in general: you can easily hit a cushion at a 45 degree angle and make the cue ball come back on the same line it came from. You can't do that in real life. If you strike the cue ball low like you're about to hit a screw shot IRL you need to play it at max speed or close to it, otherwise the cue ball will spin so much it slows to a crawl before it reaches the object ball and won't come back.

You can't lower the view and level it out enough to aim longer shots properly without assist lines enabled. It's somewhat manageable in pool but not in snooker due to the larger table.

The game doesn't let you because the butt of the cue is so high in the air that the cue would get in the way of your vision if they'd let you lower your view and level it out. So you are stuck with a higher viewpoint that's angled downwards. Despite all that, at the lowest you can get the camera to go, the cue already gets in the way of your vision so they made it go semi transparent. I don't like to play with assists on.

The inability to get a low enough and not downward view and constantly having the cue in my face taking a viewpoint that's still too high but UNDER the cue because the butt end is in the air so much I find highly annoying. How did *that* get past QA testing? Have you ever walked into a pool hall where everyone held the end of their cue above their heads? Me neither. And Cherry Pop have done it twice! It's the same in the original Pool Nation.

If you've never been taught how to play so you don't know what bending forward onto a cue is supposed to look like and you play with aim assist lines on then it might not bother you, but even if that's the case you too will be able to aim better and after a while turn those lines off in pool/snooker titles that didn't mess this up.

They improved on most of this with Snooker Nation Championship 2019 which is a snooker version of Pool Nation FX using the same engine (UE4), where you *can* lower the view and level it out so you can actually aim longer shots, spin is reduced to be a closer to real life - you can still curve the cue ball too much when only side spin is applied but it's less than in FX. No deflection in that version either unfortunately. It's is the only title that offers some of that BBC snooker vibe apart from the terrible "Snooker 19" which is not to be confused with SNC2019. Snooker tables in FX don't look nor sound like snooker tables. While multiplayer is working in SNC2019 no one's there.

In FX nearly every single player quits mid game because it attracts casuals with an attention span about as long as the average tiktok video and there's no real penalty for quitting. For multiplayer ShootersPool is your best choice as it doesn't have that problem and it's the only alternative with enough players (apart from VP4 which looks really bad).

If you want to play something less sterile, soulless and competition focused than ShootersPool, feel free to add me to play the excellent Cue Club 2 or Snooker Nation Championship 2019. There's no one online in SNC2019 and almost no one in CC2, so to play them with humans instead of AI you have to bring your own opponents.

Daily challenge, trickshot mode, endurance mode, large amount of unlockables, many different locations and tables with different designs, all sorts of crazy (unrealistic / sci-fi) cues. It's the most "gamey" cue sports game of them all with the most content. The thumping electronic music, flashy environments and bright colours, that's what makes FX stand out.

Don't expect realism and you can ignore its snooker mode because it exacerbates all of the game's issues, the lack of deflection, the crazy spin, not being able to properly aim long pots, the players quitting mid frame because it takes longer, all of that.

So should I recommend it (for pool) to casual players because of the fun factor and varied content or should I thumb it down because it's unrealistic? It depends what it was advertised as. So let's look at what's on the store page:

"serious Sim which can actually improve your real life game"
"flawlessly blends reality with the impossible"
"visually stunning billiards SIMULATION with the critically acclaimed pool nation physics engine."

It's not a flawless blend if the physics no longer resemble reality. It's a game not both a game and a simulation. And for that reason trying to use it to improve your real life pool / snooker would be a big mistake. I'll have to thumb it down as you're not getting what they make you believe you're getting.

Snooker-only version of Pool Nation FX that lets you cue much more level with the table instead of down toward it so much and lets you lower the view more and level it out so you can aim (longer shots) better.

Not quite as convenient with controller or mouse, or quite as smooth with a mouse as ShootersPool, Virtual Pool 4 and Cue Club 2, but good enough to get the job done. They are the same as in Pool Nation FX except the view can be lowered a lot more so that you can overlap balls to see where exactly you're aiming, and the butt of the cue isn't up in the air anymore so the cue doesn't block you or get in the way of your vision. And every snooker / pool player knows the importance of not cueing downward unless there's no other way.

Spin was exaggerated in Pool Nation FX so I'm glad to see that toned down considerably here even if side spin still curves the path of the cue ball more than IRL. Neither this nor FX implements deflection: The cue ball when struck right of center doesn't move left initially like it should, so e.g. on the breakoff shot you still have to aim more toward the center of the pack than you would IRL or you'll miss the pack entirely. ShootersPool, Virtual Pool 4 and Cue Club 2 do have deflection implemented. That doesn't mean this game doesn't have its place.

It has far less overall content than FX, such as tables and locations so it feels like a stripped down version of it with additions and improvements made to snooker. The menu redesign looks kinda bad, but for snooker fans and people who have played IRL it's the better game for the above mentioned reasons plus the BBC TV snooker world championships type look and feel, even if that's a bare minimum effort minus the licensing. It still helps.

Another reviewer wrote: "despite the crowd clapping and the referee counting score, it feels... soulless". Eh, you could say it's mostly a minimum effort, low budget FX reskin. Doing so would be forgetting that the alternatives are more soulless than this, not less. ShootersPool and VP4 are both very clinical, dry, utterly soulless simulator experiences. That leaves us Cue Club 2 which does an excellent job at simulating snooker but as a game with multiple cue sports in it, it too lacks the snooker vibe. It has a low detail art style. The graphics in SNC2019 aren't amazing either but it looks better than CC2 and has a more realistic art style, which is important when you want it to feel like you are playing snooker not any other videogame.

While we're talking graphics: the cloth is much too brightly lit at least on the first table, even the cue loses some of its colour to that. I don't know if tables in the other locations are like that too because I haven't unlocked them yet. You get used to it, I don't mind it too much. It's the price you pay.

It works very well and it's the same method as in Pool Nation FX. When you draw back, a curved power bar right above the cue ball fills. You can either lock the amount in place with a button press in order to shoot later (by pushing forward), or simply push forward to shoot immediately. The bar never gets in the way and auto-hides again immediately. You can disable the power bar entirely if you prefer and just "shoot with the mouse" or thumb stick like you have to in VP4 / ShootersPool and like you can in Cue Club 2.

If a human at a snooker club played the way the AI plays in SNC2019, his opponents would force him to eat his chalk. It feels like you are playing against a bot, it doesn't play very human like. The singleplayer mode is difficult even on "Easy". The AI frequently plays safe in a cheap way by rolling the cue ball at *exactly* the right pace to come to a halt touching the object ball, so that you'll then struggle to create the angle needed to pot it or play a good safety. The AI feels scripted to every now and then just make a break and pull off pots Ronnie O'Sullivan wouldn't attempt. It has a tendency to leave you snookered unrealistically often, too. It doesn't feel like it has a consistent skill level, more like scripted to either have that particular visit to the table fail completely or not and then automatically make a 20+ break. Sometimes it's in between but that's much more common in humans than the AI. Once it's potted 2-3 balls the Easy AI is probably going to make a 20-30 break. It's a good thing it's so challenging to win though, as without that you'd burn through the game's limited singleplayer content too quickly. If you aren't already a snooker player and you like to play with aim assist lines disabled like I do, you don't stand a chance.

Multiplayer is empty, the server is still up though. Feel free to add me if you want to play.

The game constantly generates dark circles on the cloth where the cue ball is going to end up subject to where your cue is currently pointing and the shot power you've locked in (see previous paragraph). I try to ignore the circles, they are nothing but an annoying, distracting inconvenience to me. You cannot turn them off. In fact, the lower(!) you set the aim assist lines level, the larger the dark circles get to avoid telling you exactly where the cue ball will end up. The higher the level of assist lines you enable the smaller the dark circles are. I play with the lines off because that was the whole point of improving the camera and cue elevation from FX wasn't it? So I get the largest most distracting circles on the table. The circle is removed and redrawn every time your cue moves a pixel and they have a somewhat animated effect to them.

You set the assists level to OFF and the dev thought it a good idea to then greatly enlarge the one assist you can't turn off. Brilliant. Great tool for those who want to learn better cue ball control but OFF should mean OFF.

Post by dev confirming they can't be disabled: https://steamproxy.net/app/458830/discussions/0/1741101364287895112/?ctp=2#c1776010325113111920

Unlike FX, it's hard capped at 60 fps. Maybe to keep the physics accurate, I don't know. I've tried to unlock the framerate with various .ini file edits as it uses Unreal Engine 4. My attempts were unsuccessful. Force disabling vsync through the graphics driver didn't do it either.

It's not the highest production quality or most polished game ever, so don't expect to be overwhelmed by its presentation. You may run into a menu bug where a setting you changed wasn't remembered. It doesn't have all that much content either. It is priced accordingly. At the price of €4 and now €1.20 in the summer sale it's easily worth the money and I enjoy it, hence the recommendation.

Looks so good that in 2024 the 2014 release year could've been a typo but it needed more work before being released.

Needs proper kb+mouse support and input bug fixing (even for controller, at least in multiplayer), faster less restrictive camera control, a better menu system, a multiplayer lobby system and more content. It has no configurability and the physics are incomplete.

IRL not only do you have perfect depth perception, you can also move your head anywhere you like before taking the shot. In Pure Pool the cameras are more restrictive than in ShootersPool, Virtual Pool 4 and Cue Club 2.

The camera position makes it hard to aim without an assist line especially when the cue ball is near the cushion, or on longer pots. When near a cushion you a) cannot lower the cue as much as you can IRL and b) can't lower the view enough so you can't line it up properly.

At first I tried to play with kb+mouse and couldn't lower the view enough to aim longer shots properly. Now that I switched to controller I randomly discovered holding down 'down' on the D-pad temporarily lowers the view. Finally I could aim better but it only works as long as your cue ball isn't anywhere near the cushion. And in other situations it can be lower than you want while the regular view is higher than you want.

The "on the shot" view is too close to the cue ball and above it, making it hard to tell how far out of center you're about to strike the cue ball. The game won't let you strike the cue ball as much out of center as it should, either.

The other camera you get is "stand up", roughly as high as where your head would be if you were standing. It is not that helpful to judge the line because it has some sideways movement going to and from regular "on the shot" view. You can rotate "standing view" but it's slow and the center of the table is its pivot point and you cannot move that. So you can't always get the exact viewpoint you want, to judge a plant or a gap etc.

So, a bit of help then? Not really, because you can't set aim assist line length seperately, it's tied to match / AI difficulty level. You also can't get just cue ball aim line but no object ball lines. The highest difficulty that still has aim lines gives you object ball lines on object balls close to you, so you either get no help or too much.

The problem with having to use a controller is it takes too long to get a view of things so you either hit & hope or take the time to get a good look and slow the game to a crawl. With a mouse in ShootersPool and VP4 you can snap right to where you need to be and snap right back to the cue. In Pure Pool every camera motion is a slow movement. Adding to the slowness is the apparent delay between shots in multiplayer and waiting for the game to become responsive again whenever the input system has a seizure.

You have to play with a controller. The menu and UI / input system is terrible and frequently unresponsive when used with keyboard + mouse. At least with the cameras and button actions that you get. Keystrokes occasionally get ignored or repeated. Sometimes even with the controller you have to wait until the last few seconds of your turn before you can do anything. When using a mouse the cursor stays on screen and when you rotate your view it reaches the edge of the monitor and stops your view from rotating any further, forcing you to drag the mouse repeatedly for big directional changes.

Not a lot of meat on its bones. E.g. You can't choose a table or location. With few exceptions, the Challenge modes are all time challenges and I don't like them very much especially with how slow it is to control the game with a controller. 'Career' is simply a set of games vs AI, one set per difficulty level presented in a very bad looking menu.

Sound effects are another weak point, sounding dull / muffled. The music is laid back elevator smooth jazz/lounge type stuff. Not that many tracks so it gets repetitive quickly. It makes you wanna fall asleep. It's an extremely laid back vibe, which combined with the slick visuals and smoothed out camera movements is what makes Pure Pool unique. Everything is gentle. It's like taking a bath.

Deflection is missing: a cue ball struck on the right hand side in this game does not move left initially no matter how hard or soft you hit it. But the effect of side spin causing the ball to curve is quite strong (even if not as overdone as in Pool Nation FX). So for instance on the breakoff shot in snooker when you apply side or side+top like you would IRL and aim where you would IRL you'll miss the pack entirely. VP4, ShootersPool and Cue Club 2 are more realistic in this regard. Furthermore, the cushions in snooker knock a little too much pace off the ball.

There are no settings so you can't get the game to look play and feel the way you want. Even simple things you might expect like choose a table, change pocket size, cloth speed, FOV (default is a little too zoomed in for me), distance from cue ball, cue stroke sensitivity, you name it. Not available.

There's only a handful of hotkeys on the HUD and that's all you get. You can't get a replay of a shot. You can't take back a shot in solo practise mode either. I tried to find more hotkeys in the Help menu but it only gives you advice about the game of pool, not the game itself. So I did the natural thing and pressed all the things and nothing happened.

There's no lobby with chat or a list of hosted games. All you see is a list of other players. You have to challenge each one individually and hope they respond and accept. You cannot challenge an additional person until you cancel the challenge you already have open. It was still easier to play a few games with others than in Pool Nation FX where not many people join games with aim assist off and always quit because they have attention spans about as long as a tiktok video. But Pure Pool multiplayer was quite slow and difficult to play well quickly due to the slow camera controls. For multiplayer, Shooterspool and VP4 are better choices. So is Cue Club 2 if you can bring a friend, despite the fact that it doesn't show the other player's movement in realtime and instead shows you only the actual shot.

Superseded by Pool Nation FX which is a significantly improved version that fails to improve on this game's most jarring obvious fail: the butt of the cue is way up in the air and can't be lowered. The game doesn't let you lower the camera position enough to aim longer shots properly at all but even at that higher than ideal camera position the cue is above your head already (because the back of it is raised so much). You're looking at the table from underneath the cue that gets in the way of your view. They made it go semi transparent, still really annoying.

It's crap. Applying english affects cue ball path incorrectly (source: snooker player IRL) making it unplayable. There's no deflection at all (some call it squirt, don't google that) and when the cue ball has side spin on it, it strongly changes the *cue ball's* angle coming off the object ball. That's not at all how it works IRL. Default FOV when looking down the cue is far too high with no way to change it, nonsensical commentary, apart from some basic graphics settings there's zero options anywhere to tweak anything at all to your liking. I wasn't expecting a whole lot better than World Championship Snooker 2004 but they've actually managed to do much worse. You can't even get a replay of a shot. I'll request a refund. Don't waste your money/time.

The store page says:
"UNPRECEDENTED REALISM
This is the most authentic simulation of the sport ever created, with true-to-life physics."

That's a lie.

I'm impressed with how focused on the user experience the game is. Great quality of life features in here. The menu system is very fast to navigate. Switching from offline to multiplayer is quick and painless. When you come back you can pick up right where you left off in your game vs the AI. There's player stats, trophies, achievements, offline tournaments vs AI, and lots of game types and modes. The free camera is a little slower to operate than the one in VP4 / ShootersPool because you first have to click where you want its pivot point to be, before you switch to it. In those other two titles you can move that pivot/anchor point around while in free cam. It still gets the job done but it slows down gameplay a little. I've played low ranked competition snooker IRL and to me the physics seem good, much better than Pool Nation FX and almost on par with ShootersPool / VP4. There is no deflection below roughly 30% shot power and I have failed to pot enough balls IRL with side applied to believe there should be. The game automatically saves a replay of your highest break in a game of snooker, minus the downtime between shots. Great feature.

Is it better than VP4 and ShootersPool? No in some areas, yes in others, SP has much more detailed table and ball graphics (its environments suck) and even better physics even if in my opinion CC2's physics are good enough. CC2 has more personality and charm than VP4 and SP which are similar to each other: both multiplayer competition focused, and both have an archaic / cumbersome menu interface. VP4 and especially SP feel like sterile, soulless simulators. CC2 has the quickest, simplest multiplayer lobby system of the three but there's almost no one there. As a snooker player it's always a struggle in VP and SP too, to find (pleasant) opponents of equal skill level without too much waiting. Looks like CC2 is a step backward in that regard: not enough players but at least it has offline content with AI opponents to play against instead. CC2's main advantages are its ease of use, extensive configurability and its vibe, stemming from its (low texture detail) art style and nice music.

An important distinction from VP4 and ShootersPool is that you can shoot by setting a power % rather than using the mouse directly although that is also an option. I prefer the % for two reasons: a mouse isn't as consistent for speed as a bigger arm movement with a cue IRL, and it's the only reliable way to play for those wanting to use a wireless controller for couch gaming. Without a shot power % / power bar to set before taking a shot they would have to rely on speed of movement of a thumbstick, which would be very tricky to be precise with.

Things CC2 can't do:
- Consistently show the other player's actions in realtime in multiplayer. It tends to wait then skip straight to the actual shot. This gives multiplayer a stop & go feel where time doesn't seem to pass continuously but in bursts when the opponent is playing.
- Chat log. If you miss an opponent's comment you can't go back and still read it.
- Handle bad connections properly, sometimes causing the session to hang indefinitely, sometimes penalising the wrong player's rating for the issue, but it seems to be fine when both players have a stable connection.

There's some room for improvement with aiming in that the cue lags behind the camera movement making it harder to quickly line up your shot and it makes the cue appear to wobble when doing fine adjustments so you have to wait for the cue to settle. It makes you less sure where you're aiming. The cues could do with nicer looking skins too, they look quite bad.

All in all, glad I picked it up (-60%, summer sale). Would recommend.

I still say in a cue sports game players should embody a person able to walk around the table in 1st and/or 3rd person not be a floating cue. Maybe one day?

For multiplayer, most of the time you'll have to bring your own opponent. Feel free to add me if you'd like to play.

It's a 2008 console port re-sold with a mild visual upgrade. It still looks and feels very old. Not just the graphics, the whole thing feels old. It needed a complete remake from scratch using a modern game engine, not just a remaster. And for the price that's what it should have been.

The only graphics setting is brightness. Collisions are subpar. Disappointingly, there is no view from inside the car like there is in Gravel, only external cams: chase, hood and nose. Of the three, chase is the only useful one and the least immersive. Unfortunately, in chase view you almost can't hear the engine over the rest of the really low quality sound of the game even after turning off the crappy music because engine volume is too strongly tied to distance from car.

The challenge to control the car over rough terrain is still kinda fun and it offers something unique: offroad endurance races up to 3 hours long if you so desire, with management of wear to the car, calling in a helicopter to stop at for a quick repair (magically, without a repair crew) before continuing. Going too fast over terrain too rough adds additional wear to the shock absorbers every time you bottom out the suspension on a landing.

Between 2008 and 2024 so many better games have been released that you could play instead. The price is ridiculous for a 16 year old game with some spit & polish. In what universe this would be worth €30 I don't know. Worth about €5 so -80% sale or better. Considering bigger games that were far more expensive to make, such as Fallout New Vegas (2010) from the same era can be picked up for under €7.

Really doesn't deserve the hype for two main reasons. First, the story actually is very weak. Second, I knew to expect no gameplay but you still have to interact with the game quite a lot to move it forward and that part sucks terribly here.

People are crying over a love story full of massive plot holes, zero character depth and no love expressed between the characters. They have nothing together and shouldn't have been together in the first place. It didn't move me or affect me deeply in any way.

The dev bamboozled the players and possibly even himself with time travel, recurring items that symbolize things (every artsy fartsy movie director's favorite) and a few table spoons of confusion. It gets praise in part due to the way the story is told in that it keeps the player guessing despite being told backwards - and that IS clever - but in terms of tying everything together correctly the ball is dropped pretty hard and right from the start of the game too, confusing you through no fault of your own. Even though half of it made no sense, in the end the game plays sad piano music, the normies start crying and presto: best game ever. Puhleaze.

Autism spectrum disorder could and should also have been represented better with a lot more care. Players unfamiliar with it may well get the wrong idea.

I had to google how to progress at one point despite having been trying to do exactly what the game wanted me to do to progress, but it hadn't worked because of the bad interface, leading me to waste my time repeatedly re-exploring the area with the belief that there must have been something else to find. The game puts you on a horse with no ability to dismount. Then to be able to click an NPC to progress you have to get right on top of him, horse and everything and click in just the right spot. Movement in general is awkward. You frequently have to click the same object 6 times in a row, this is by design. Obviously that's bad design. The game will make you wait a second after every click before the next click can be registered. Why not let the player hold the button down instead of clicking over and over?

I did appreciate the overall creativity, the beautiful piano music, the witty dialogue and you do get the sense that the dev tried to get the most out of RPG Maker, creatively going as far as for example portraying a day/night transition where the sky turns red when the sun comes in. In a game with a 3D engine the engine can generate the lighting transition for you in realtime. In this case you have to appreciate that it's done with hand made pixels.

Later in the game however, the dev takes getting the most out of RPG Maker XP a few steps too far. While the story builds, so does the frustration. A confusing looping action sequence with enemies, floor spikes to avoid and 'shooting' is thrown in, something that the engine isn't suitable for, causing a climax in the frustrations just before the actual story's climax where it does the most damage. It felt out of place in a game that outside of this part is like a walking sim all the way through.

There's no settings and that's bad because the music is so loud and the graphics are too pixelated for fullscreen that it defaults to. You have to figure out on your own to press Alt+Enter to switch to windowed mode and the window you then get is far too tiny. You then drag the window's edges to make the game an acceptable size. When you relaunch the game it's back in fullscreen mode and after Alt+Enter the window is tiny again.

I don't always necessarily regret playing a game that I write a negative review for. In this case I do and I wish I could get my 6 hours back. The majority of Steam users are casuals with low end systems and on average they are suckers for easy to play games with a "cutesie" 2D art style that will run on a potato. That factors into the overall rating quite a bit. If what you're looking for is a story that'll make you cry then pick up Highway Blossoms. It kicks like a mule compared to this.

After finishing To The Moon I thought: "What the hell, dev.... did I miss something here?". Looking for the answer to that question I found this video uploaded 5 years ago. Huge spoilers so only watch it after you've played if you're still interested in playing.
https://youtu.be/67npeQIRVLU
I didn't miss anything. The one on the left is an actress who is generally more emotional and emotive than I am and probably has higher emotional intelligence. She gets really into social dynamics between characters in games, yet her experience in To The Moon matched mine pretty much exactly. She speaks my mind with every single point she makes including the ones I didn't write about. I just understood more quickly that what the game was trying to portray with one of the main characters was autism.

Syberia is still as charming as it ever was and the voice acting is excellent. One of the best point & click adventure games. Because of the slow walking animations backtracking takes a long time so when you are stuck use a walkthrough instead of revisiting every location multiple times.

It crashes on launch. To fix it: in installation folder create player.ini with this content:
800 600 16 0 BaseCMO.cmo

It then runs windowed, fullscreen will crash, and yes 800x600 is the maximum. You still have to set a desktop resolution of 1080p or less or it'll still crash. I suggest setting the desktop to 1600x900 with scaling enabled. That seems to be the happy medium between 1) making the 800x600 window appear as large as possible and 2) losing too much graphical fidelity due to too much scaling being applied. At least on my 4K 43" VA panel. If your monitor's pixel density is super high (e.g. 27-32" 4K), you may wanna go lower than 1600x900.

If you enjoy Syberia, you'll probably also like Gray Matter.
https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/260570/Gray_Matter/

I didn't give a hoot about the mentally challenged NPCs with owl heads, their petty gossip, bad-mouthing of other NPCs and their inability to do simple things without the player's help. Someone gets their head stuck in a vase and you need the hero's help to get him out by fetch questing the soap? NPC woes is what the game seems to focus on so when it fails to make you care about them it's game over. After 1.9 hours I wasn't enjoying it so I called it quits. Not so I could still get a refund - that ship sailed a long time ago as the game's been in my library for a while. I quit because I have better games to be playing. For a 90% positive rated game the writing isn't good enough.