Review: Bar Billiards
Score:
72%
Steve Litchfield steps back into the obscure but skilful world of Bar Billiards in his review of this S60 simulation.
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So there I was on holiday in a mega-camp site with 1000 other campers. I walked into the 'buzzing' bar with my friend and thought 'This really isn't my scene'. But.... what was that hidden away in the corner? A bar billiards table. Unused, unloved and ignored by all. We found a cue under the table and started to play, to mystified looks from the drinkers around us - what on earth were we playing? After an hour, most of the guys around us were looking on enviously, presumably having worked out (approximately) the rules from watching us. Bar billiards can be fast and furious, yet with most of the skill of pool or snooker.
The aim is to cannon (or pot) balls into and from each other, in order to get any of them down any hole, each of which carries a different score. The catch is that if you knock over a light-coloured 'pin', your break is over and its score cancelled. If you knock over the black pin, your entire score is cancelled. Ouch.
Bar Billiards here is a port of the same game from the Windows Mobile environment, which shows from the start with a non-standard (but reasonably intuitive) interface and a hefty RAM footprint (the classic sign of an app reliant on an integrated multi-platform game engine). One advantage of the multi-platform support is that there's an online multi-player mode here, via IP addresses, and you can play against someone on a Pocket PC or Windows Smartphone. Having said that, there's no real online portal to help you find opponents, you have to negotiate these yourself. Luckily there's Bluetooth support too, so you can play against someone in the same room, which should be easier to arrange. Or even play against a friend by simply passing the phone between you.
Once underway, the interface is simple, with only the left function key to step through the actions (play shot, aim ball, set cue ball contact and power) and the navigator key to determine aim. In 'Easy' mode there's an aiming line to help you line shots up, but you can elect to do without this in a harder mode. Not that you'd want to, as Bar Billiards is already hard enough - you simply won't believe how easy it is to mess up with a pin-knocking foul after a good break.
The high score table inside the game mocks you with a column of extremely high scores, although it's not clear from the game how long a playing session you're supposed to set up (it's one of the options) in order to get near these. As long as possible, I guess, in this case 20 minutes, although I couldn't get near the table scores.
Bar Billiards is presented well enough, with a top down view that zooms in and out slightly to show you more clearly what's happening. The balls even rattle around before dropping, just as on a real table. And there's a fun element in a test-your-skill kind of way. But with no computer opponent to play against there's a real playability issue here if you're on your own, in that whenever you sense a risky shot you can play something outrageously simple so as to keep your break so far and to set yourself up for a blistering start to the next break (whereas in real life your opponent would leap in gleefully).
Provided you use the game to practise and then find real opponents, Bar Billiards works very well, although it's currently only available for S60 2nd Edition devices - a 3rd Edition version is in development, we're told.
Reviewed by Steve Litchfield at