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Ok game with very annoying and frustrating features....

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 23 / 23
Date: September 09, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Pool Party is ok but let me outline the pros and cons of this game.

Pros:
- Nice graphics = Great colors and imagery
- Somewhat realistic gameplay
- As you win games you unlock new items such as pool tables, cue sticks, music, and environments
- Different types of pool games such as 8-ball, 9-ball, snooker, etc.

Cons:
- Lack of general options(this will be further discussed in my other points)
- Not a lot of characters to choose from
- Annoying sound effects = You can turn off the background sounds and/or general sound effects. But who wants a completely silent game? That's no fun. So I opt to leave the background sounds off but I keep the general sound effects on. However with that, you get irritating sounds such as, applause every time you hit a ball into a pocket, bells that sound when it's your turn and a buzzer sound when you lose a turn.
- The balls are not clearly marked = Depending on the positioning of the ball on the table sometimes you can't tell the difference between stripes and solids. I've hit my opponent's ball in by accident a few times because I thought his or her solid was my stripe.
- No continuous play = The game doesn't keep going after you win. You can save your win but you have to start over and choose your options all over again.
- No tournaments, championships, prizes to win besides unlocking items, or anything to make this a truly fun, challenging or realistic game
- When you have ball-in-hand, you have to go to the options to move the ball
- A large version of the character or player you chose very strangely stays at the lower left hand corner of the screen. There is no way to turn this off. I would say the character takes up about 25% or the screen. The character is not transparent so if you have to make a shot to the left corner pocket at the bottom of the screen, the character blocks your shot and you can't see the pocket your shooting into. In order to make the character a little more transparent you have to press and hold a button on the nunchuk controller. While doing that you can sort of line up your shot but you have to let go of the button in order to shoot. When you let go, the transparency goes off and the character comes into full view blocking your shot again.
- Along with the character blocking your shot, the option to apply English on your ball is semi-transparent and stays on the lower right hand corner of the screen and also takes up about 25% of the screen. I can't turn this off either.

This game is poorly designed and not very user friendly. After waiting quite a while for Wii to come out with a good pool game, they've missed the mark here.

Avoid like the plague

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: November 14, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I have to say I was looking forward to this game for months. I became totally addicted to the pool game in the Wii games pack.

This is a poor quality Gamecube style game.

How can a company make a game for the Wii that uses NONE of the wii's human interface advantages?

Dont buy this game and expect to be able to stroke the cue with a realistic action. This game makes you choose your power level first and then trigger the shot... in other words this is nothing like playing pool. You could do the same with a conventional controller.

The wii game pack version might not have fancy graphics or any options but the cue action is superb.

Dont waste your money on this.

Do NOT buy this game - stick with Wii Play's Billiards

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: January 15, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This is truly a horrible game. I own Wii Play and have played their Billiards game quite a bit. After a while of playing that, I got tired of the single game type (kind of like Rotation with only 9 balls) and decided I'd buy the only other Pool game on the Wii (which, in itself, is quite baffling since the controls make it a natural for pool games!): Pool Party.

After struggling in vain along with my brother-in-law to play two games of pool with it, I packed it back up and returned it to the store, advising them to stop carrying it. It's games like this that could give the Wii a really bad reputation as an inferior console. I'm honestly bewildered that Nintendo licensed this product for release.

Pros & Cons:

Pros:
- Has a very good variety of game types. 8 Ball, 9 Ball, Rotation, Straight Pool, Billiards and some ones I hadn't heard of like Killer and Blackjack, etc. No Cutthroat, though.

Cons: (get comfortable)

- Manual is riddled with typos, including one where they're telling you how to pull back the cue and *leave out the button you have to press while pulling back*. It says something like: "press button while pulling back". They clearly didn't have a proofreader or even a spellcheck. The credits at the back of the manual list just 3 programmers as developing the game and you can tell.

- Awful graphics. The balls are all the wrong colors and somehow you can't even make out the numbers on the balls just by looking at them - even on your 1080p 37" widescreen HDTV. Wii Play's Billiards looks several times better.

- Horrible controls. Incredibly overcomplicated and unintuitive. In Wii Play Billiards, you can put draw and spin on the ball simply by aiming your remote at any point on the ball and you can see where you're aiming by a red dot on the ball. In Pool Play, you have to press and hold a button and then move the aim position by pressing arrows on the screen. WTF? Did the developers even *play* Wii Play Billiards? And you can't even control the power of your shot by how quickly you push forward on the remote - you have to set some power meter by holding A & B while pulling back the remote (which, by the way, is also how you move the camera so you often line up your shot then completely screw it up while pulling back to shoot). It's as if it was developed to be played on a PC with a mouse then just ported to a Wii with a minimum of effort and shipped.

- Muddy, clumsy physics simulation. Once you actually do hit the ball, there's about a full second lag before anything happens on screen. The balls don't seem to bounce off each other with any true elasticity or momentum, spin seems oddly rigid.

- Awful interface. Unintuitive pre-game menus, simple text overlays for messages, no in-game tips or instructions and a PC-like menu you have to open up to switch between things like seeing what number a ball is (in Wii Play Billiards, just put your cursor over it and it tells you), saving and loading, etc.

- General lack of polish. Playing Pool Party and going back to Wii Play Billiards really makes you appreciate the little things Nintendo did to make their Billiards game fun and intuitive. Pool Party makes stupid blunders like starting off your camera pointing the cue ball at a pocket rather than, say, the closest legal ball. Or how about taking up the whole bottom left corner of the screen with your completely useless and noncustomizable portrait (of which there are about 4 or 5 to choose from - all obvious direct renders from Poser) where what you'd really like to see is oh, say, the score?

Truly a horrible game. If anyone has already bought this game, I highly recommend you pick up Wii Play (if you can find it) and see how it should be done (though I warn you it will probably ruin Pool Party for you if you actually enjoy it already). The only thing Pool Party has over Wii Play is the number of game types (but that doesn't really count if the core gameplay mechanics make it unplayable).

If I could give this game negative stars, I would. :/

Solid Pool Play, but slightly annoying interface

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: October 26, 2007
Author: Amazon User

First off, I play pool... I'm not stellar, but I certainly know my way around a pool table. With respect to the pool physics and realism of play, this game is pretty decent. However, the interface has some serious shortcomings.

1) The menu system really stinks - you spend a lot of time setting up your game choices, and have to re-do it every game. As a previous reviewer said, the ball-in-hand control requires dropping into the in-game menu. Also, it is sometimes difficult to indentify the balls - even if you know the numbers by color because at a distance, the striped ones tend to "bleed" a bit. The in-game menu does offer an "identify" feature where you can point at a ball and get a closeup, but it's kind of annoying.

2) as others have mentioned, the character portrait takes up a rather large space in the lower left corner, and it only fades while actively moving. You have to mess with your camera angles to actually see the ball/pocket you're going for at times.

2a)You can switch camera views to try and find an angle where you can see what's going on, but there are something like 6 different angles, and the only two really useful ones are top-down and behind-the-cue-stick.

3) I'm a bit disappointed with the implementation of the Wii controls... not because the controls are bad per-se, but because it just seems like there's so much more potential to do something that no other pool video game has done before: realistically simulate the action of handling the cuestick.

WHAT I'D LIKE TO SEE:
It seems like a natural interface... you line up your player's angle and set the english (where on the cue ball you want to hit), but when you take the shot, the angle and speed given to the WiiMote would translate directly to how the cue moved and hit the ball.

WHAT THIS GAME ACTUALLY DOES:
You use the Nunchuck thumb or the digital pad on the Wiimote to move the player around the table (actually, to move the cue stick in relation to the cue ball) to line up the shot, you then hold the 1 button while either moving the WiiMote around or using the digital pad to set up the english on the ball, then pull the B trigger and use the up and down on the digital pad to set the power. When you're ready to take the shot, you hold the B trigger and sort of jerk the WiiMote forward. However, the angle/direction, and most importantly, the SPEED of the movement has absolutely no bearing on the power or angle of the shot. Those are all set up with the control actions stated earlier. In short, the game implements a control interface that is no better than what you could do with a traditional game controller.

3a) When I was playing with another person, we both found ourselves waiting a long time for the other to adjust and line up their shot, and having to re-choose all our game options to play the same table setup and game a second time was kind of bothersome.

4) The music is decent enough, but when you choose a song, it repeats for the ENTIRE GAME. It gets really tiring after a couple rounds. You can unlock more songs by winning games, but there really aren't all that many, and the single song repeat music makes them all so annoying you'll be looking for the mute option really quickly.

Ok, I was pretty harsh. The bottom line is that the pool playing itself is pretty good, and I'd rather own this title than not have a pool game to play. However, as soon as I can get a pool title with a better interface and that takes better advantage of the WiiMote, I'm going to ditch this and never look back.

Fun Game!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: September 20, 2007
Author: Amazon User

There have been some negative reviews about this game but I have to say that I enjoy it. I am an okay pool player and I think that this game will actually help me improve. I find the reaction to the game to be very realistic and it has helped me learn about angles. It only took me a short while of fooling around with it to learn the controls and get the hang of it. The previous reviewer mentioned the character picture being located in the bottom left hand corner of the screen, which it is, but on my T.V. the image goes transparent when making a shot. Either way the image being there has not bothered me at all. I really don't even notice it. Overall I think this is a fun game and a good value.

Pool Party

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: December 13, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Got this game as a get well present for hubby - this game is great! He likes it very much! He plays and plays it - He's getting really good at it. Because of the motorcycle accident, he cannot stand for a long time so with this game he can sit & play it! It's SUPER!! Recommend it to anyone who likes to play pool. It will help you perfect the real game too.

Pool Party.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: November 06, 2007
Author: Amazon User

It's actually not a bad game once you get the hang of it. Angles are a little harder to gauge than some other Pool games I've played, but I guess that's a bit more like real life.

Good variety of games - great to see the inclusion of Billiards here. I found this title a lot more fun when playing a real person, and there's plenty of chill-out-with-your-mates longevity here. The AI when playing against the comp is very chaotic, as another reviewer mentioned (ranging from brilliant to stupid.)

Pro's:
- Best in multiplayer modes.
- Several games types available (billiards, 8-ball, 9-ball and others)
- simple controls.

Cons:
- AI is quite erratic when playing against a computer player.
- Menus are a little "clunky." Could have been set up better.

The Multiplayer mode is the strength in this title. I didn't really get into it until playing another real person.

This game is a less than 1 star game, don't waste your money

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: May 31, 2008
Author: Amazon User

If you like the pool game that came on the Wii Play, then don't bother. This game sucks! I only paid [...] for it and I wish I hadn't. It is way too hard to figure out how to play and it is nothing but frustrating. Don't be tempted to buy it because it is the only pool game out there. Even then it is a complete waste of your time and money!

Please don't waste your money.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: July 26, 2008
Author: Amazon User

The controls for the game are horrendous. It's as if someone just threw this game together. But the worst part is, the controller accessory that was designed for it must never have been tested before selling it; the manufacturer would have noticed the IR transmitter gets blocked by pieces inside the pool cue stick. Nintendo is allowing too many mistakes by third party companies and needs to tighten down these problems.

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