Friday Night 3D Pool

List Price: $19.99 Discount Price: $9.95

Features:

• Pool simulation with cool graphics and many options
• Easy-to-use interface
• Over 70 computer opponents
• Three classic games to play
• For 1 to 4 players

Accessories:
PC Gamer (1-year)	Games for Windows: The Official Magazine

Customer Reviews:

Pool/Snooker review [Posted on 2003-10-15]
This is currently my favorite game. I have not really taken to other Pool/Snooker games I have played, but this provides that blend of good gameplay and nice aesthetics that has kept me playing. The first thing that pulled me in was the beautiful graphics and sound. The look of the balls and table are clearly better than other Pool games I have looked at. It really has a photo-realistic quality. Beyond that, the AI and physics seem excellent. The game provides AI opponents (over 70) that seem to have real human-like play characteristics. I have only played the 8-ball in depth, but the Snooker also looks very convincing. There are no 3D animated characters I'm afraid, but nice mugshots with full player descriptions. The 3 environments are pretty good, but not up to the quality of the balls and table.

Net, this is a strong recommendation. It is a cool game that has clearly hooked me to my PC to the early hours, so I guess that says it all!

As close to the real thing as I can get [Posted on 2003-10-23]
This is a great game. Because of a busy job, I don't have much time to play games these days, but this game got me hooked. I only picked it up because I wanted to try a snooker game as a substitute for moving to a country without a single snooker table. The substitute turned out to be much closer to the real thing than I expected. The graphics are great, the playing action is very natural (and thus takes quite some time to get used to, which is part of the fun) and the large variety of players forces you into an orthodox snooker style. If your defense is not as good as your potting ability, the better players will tear you apart! The rating system and the three different levels (home, club and tournament) give you enough things to aim for to enjoy this game for a long time. The reason I am not giving this game five stars is that the snooker table is a little too big for the camera angles. There is always some part (about one-fifth) of the table hidden from view, which makes it hard to select the shots sometimes. In this case the top view (camera with a view from the ceiling) needs to be used, which takes away some of the natural feeling of playing the game. Also, after taking a shot, the cue ball often disappears from view. In many cases, it is more important to know where the cue ball is going to end up than what the other balls are doing. Making the snooker table a little bit smaller should solve this problem. One other thing is the uncanny ability of the computer players to escape from snooker situations. It is almost impossible to lay a snooker for a computer player. Even the weakest player will play a perfect shot off four cushions and make contact. Finally, the rating is not always a good representation of the real strength of computer players. I am currently playing in the club and there are five or six players there that are clearly overrated (try Fernando Morsella!). On the good side, this makes it easier to gain rating points, getting your motivation up, so this might not be a bug, but a feature! All in all, this game is a clear recommendation and definitely worth buying.

Screen shots for 3D Pool [Posted on 2003-11-11]
I should point out immediately that I am a contributing developer of this game, so this is not an impartial submission. However my simple intention is to just draw readers attention to a collection of helpful screenshots for this product on the independent "gamespot" site (under the rules for this site I cannot provide the URL, but it is not hard to find)

I had to give a star rating, so have given it the 5 stars I think it deserves. Other games for our group are in the 3-5 star region, but this is clearly the best.

Hope this helps!

Great graphics and playability ... [Posted on 2005-04-08]
HOWEVER - if you need customer support to answer a question, forget it. Unfortunately this seems to be the norm with these small time software firms. I also experienced this with 3D Live Pool by Etiumsoft, no response whatsoever when I had a problem with the sound in their game. If you don't really care about these issues, this is a pretty darn realistic game, and you'll enjoy it. I just feel that trying to get a couple of simple questions answered shouldn't be met with silence.

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