Review from a Veteran.
Ripstone got the official licences for this game , and as soon as i found this out my first reaction in various forums was oh no this is going to be a travesty and they proved me right once again,
I have played every iteration of snooker and pool games since back on the spectrum so I have years upon years of experience not only playing but also in game design.Review from a Veteran.
Ripstone got the official licences for this game , and as soon as i found this out my first reaction in various forums was oh no this is going to be a travesty and they proved me right once again,
I have played every iteration of snooker and pool games since back on the spectrum so I have years upon years of experience not only playing but also in game design.
If anyone who owned a playstation 2 they will instantly tell that this is a straight copy of World Snooker Championship right down to the game engine itself. Im presuming they got the rights to use the engine because this is literally a port not a built from the ground up snooker game.
It's beyond comprehension how lazy ripstone have been with this game , the fact they used everything from the old game engine makes it even more horrific and disrespectful to provide such a lack of content and effort.
The game has slightly upgraded textures from the ps2 games , you could say maybe xbox 360 standard but certainly not xbox one or pc standard or ps4 for that matter. They added ( very poorly ) faces of the latest players , added a bunch of still images and a very bland UI and that's about it.
There is a career mode which is horribly plain and gives you zero incentive to play through it after a few games as there is zero player ID in this game , every player simply plays the same way apart from the difficulty changes slightly based on ranking position ( comical ). So if you were hoping ronnie would play like ronnie for example , you would be mistaken as he simply plays like every other player because there all just generic players with some terrible textures added for faces.
You win money in events but this money is of no use as they didnt even have the energy to create an in game store or come with some sort of idea to spend your winnings , make the game interesting. They could have added interviews , a progression system , player stats that go up and down based on performance. I could go on but not much point, it's amazing how a consumer like myself has hundreds of ideas yet a company handed official licences and charging full retail cant or cant be bothered to come up with or implement any interesting ideas.
Ripstone were happy to simply port an old game , slap some real names on the game and make some money. That is the top and bottom line and they have zero comebacks regarding that statement because anyone can simply release the game code and point out everything they used.
So on from the horrendous career mode there is a practice table which even has its own tab to suggest its some sort of game mode , again laughable. Then there is a challenges mode but Ripstone incredibly decided to add this a DLC and ask people to play for it. I mean seriously were talking about silly challenges any pool or snooker game would add for free and then update weekly with more if it wasnt Ripstone obviously.
There is online play but this is just as bad as everything else. There is no option for ranked or unranked with leaderboards etc its simply either play unranked or wait till they start the terrible tournament system which runs for a set amount of time , then that counts as a ranked game apparently. I mean seriously i dont know if it's the chuckle brothers producing this game or Donald Trump but it has to be one of them because nobody in the gaming industry could design a game so badly.
I continue , so as you can tell all the modes are very poor and provide zero entertainment. There is the gameplay then , so as i said this is a port of a ps2 game , yes at the time world snooker championship was a little fun but it was basically a bad arcade snooker game with terribly AI that potted impossible shots as many will know. And thats what we have again as you can imagine as its the same dam game engine " laughs ". Aiming Arc is terrible and actually does nothing but put you off your shots , and no option to turn this off by the way online incase you simply dont want anything to put you off , oh no there is zero settings guys.
I woudl go into the gameplay in depth but instead i woudl advise you to read any reveiew of wsc from the ps2 because thats what this is and mayeb watch some videos on youtube.
I dont have energy to write anymore because it's not worth the effort as Ripstone already have money from customers but what I will say is to anyone interested in a snooker game do not and i repeat do not buy this game or any other title Ripstone produce. They are a terrible company , lazy , money focused only and dont deserve any support in the industry. Hopefully they go bust and dwindle away like every other bad company we can only hope.
peace… Expand