Kick Shot Pool Review

Some genres aren’t covered very well on home consoles. The sub-genre of pool is one of those that has a small presence on any of the major consoles available on the market. This leaves gamers with one of two choices: turn to the personal computer, or wait for a competent pool title to be released on consoles. Glimmer Games hopes that its debut product, Kick Shot Pool, will be a success with PC gamers.

To start, Kick Shot Pool is a game that suffers from enormous lag. The response time varies depending on how many applications you have running, but can take a second or more to respond. This leads to unnecessary missed shots. The audio-visual sync is off too, so you’ll hear balls being hit and pocketed before you see it on the screen. On top of that, there is only a single pool hall to choose from, making the experience monotonous after just a few rounds of play.

Another fault that isn’t forgivable is the lack of any music track at all. Pop in a CD or turn on the radio, unless you want to listen to the boring sounds of balls colliding for the duration of play. You’ll encounter dead silence when setting up a shot, so if you’re the type of person that will lose patience with the game just for that, stop reading this now and forget about this game. The developers could have done something, anything, to include music. Even some basic orchestral sounds would have done well.

Kick Shot Pool does have one thing going for it. You have the option of playing in Practice, Exhibition, Tournament, League, and various Multi-player modes. Surprisingly, Glimmer Games included an online component. Unfortunately, like most budget-priced games, not many people play the online modes. When I attempted to find a game, no games were available. You’ll likely encounter the same problem.

Now, if you’re wondering how the game controls, here’s a basic run-down. You control the pool stick with the mouse. The mouse also acts as the camera, so while the camera will be fixed on the cue ball, the camera will rotate in the direction that you move your stick. By pressing S, and moving the mouse backwards/forwards, you shoot the cue ball. This is where lag comes into play. If the game isn’t lagging, the process is smooth. Otherwise, you can easily hit the ball too soft or too hard.

Kick Shot Pool is one of the most basic pool games that I’ve ever played. You’d be better off buying Pool Paradise for the PC, but there’s nothing to stop you from at least giving Kick Shot Pool a try. Visit Glimmer Games’ website to try the demo, or to download the full version at $19.99.