Snooker simulation at its BEST (this is the PC version) (Jimmy Whites Cueball 2 (PS))

Member Name: marktjones

Product:	Jimmy Whites Cueball 2 (PS)
Date:	10/01/01 (133 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: excellent graphics, accurate physics, many extras.

Disadvantages: perhaps a little too hard for the non-snooker-player.

This game is made by the people at "awesome develpoments", and published by Virgin interactive. This being the sequel to the top-selling Jimmy white's Cueball in 1993, and as you would expect, this game is a massive improvement of the origonal, because of the graphical capabilities of today's machines over the PCs you could by in the early 90s.

This is the first thing that catches your attention about this game, the fact that the graphics on this game are absolutely spot-on. You can zoom right in on a shot, and you will get no pixelation at all, and the shots seem so smooth, as long as you have a graphics card that has more than 4MB (most nowadays).

The phsics of the balls and the collisions works to perfection, even small deatails like collusion are included (This is when hitting the cushion harder will make the ball come off at a sharper angle, than at a slower speed) and that you do have to remember to chalk the cue, or you will chip the ball when you perform a screw shot.

As well as playing against the computer, you can do trick-shots, where you position all the balls to set up something to amaze your friends. This is particularly effective when you attempt a shot where you raise the cue angle, and put side on the ball, thus swerving the cueball around the other balls, and making it look like you are a true pro!. There is also the option of playing over a network against other people, either over a LAN connection, or over the internet. Which is very fun if you set up a tournament between you friends or something.

When you first play it, you may think that the learing curve is a little hard, and you would be right, it is a difficult game to play (as snooker is!, the pro just make it look easy on the telly), and you will be lucky to pot one ball on your first attempt, but over time you will get better. The good thing about this is, because this game is such a good simulation of the real thing, that your Sno
oker ability in real life will improve too.

Don't you believe that snooker is the only game included within this package. As you can play pool, darts, chequers and an arcaede game produced by Archer Maclean himself a few years ago called "dropzone", which too is fun in a retro kind of way. Because the game is set in a mansion, you get a free-roaming way to get to all your games, for example you could be playing snooker, but you want to turn some music on, you acan actually walk to the jukebox and put some on, and then walk over to the dart board and start a game of darts.

Overall, if you are interest in snooker then this is one of thoso MUST HAVE games, because you will enjoy it for starters, because of the realism, and will improve your real-life game too!

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