Pool Nation Pc

[Osias Baptist]

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I've deflected blaster shots using a lightsaber, standing in the shadow of the Millennium Falcon, fought off shambling horrors in the ruins of a city at night, and constructed fantastic contraptions, suspended on a grassy plain in a bright and breezy abstract world. No attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion yet, but VR has taken me to some wild and wonderful places.

And yet, the game that convinced me of the immersive qualities of the Vive's roomscale and touch technology dropped me into a pub, in front of a pool table. Pool Nation, in replicating an experience that I'm familiar with, came closest to fooling my senses completely.

Chances are, if you're playing Pool Nation in VR, the space you've managed to clear for yourself is significantly smaller than a pub. And yet when you put the helmet on, you'll see a pub around you, with people standing by the bar, a dartboard off to one side, and the sound of conversation and merriment all around. It is extremely weird to be in a place that has such an accurate atmosphere and surface credibility, weirder than being on an alien planet or inside Aperture Science's labs lobbing personality cores into the abyss.

You could actually play the game sitting in your chair, or standing on one spot, as the possible table solution mentioned earlier implies. That's because you can teleport around the table by putting your cue away then pressing one of the haptic pads to draw a target. Release and you'll appear in the spot targeted. The reticule sticks to the table by default, placing you in a position ready to line up your shot, using both hands (arms, even) in a way that felt entirely natural to me despite the absence of any actual cue.

Once you're in position you can walk around as far as the chaperone system allows. For those who don't know the lingo, the chaperone system is the in-VR holographic wall that appears when you're close to a wall in the real world. It's superimposed onto the virtual world which means you'll run up against a chaperone wall long before running into the pub's walls. However, with careful use of teleporting you can travel around the entire space rather than sticking to the table.

There are distractions to find. You can pick up many of the objects in the world, from chalk cubes to beer bottles, and it's even be possible to play darts. Pick them up and throw them at the board, simple as that. There might even be a full scoring system at some point, upgrading the pub from set dressing to virtual lobby, a place to play and explore while you wait for a human opponent.

Remarkably, the entire VR demo scene was constructed from scratch rather than using a backdrop included in the original release. Pool Nation's existing locations weren't suitable, partly due to their size but also because they tend toward the bright and garish. They wouldn't have felt real.

I've always wanted grimier, dirtier details in virtual spaces and if they're a necessary component toward the credibility of VR locations, then that's one part of the helmeted future that I'm willing to embrace wholeheartedly.

The most important thing about Pool Nation is that it plays a good game of pool. And it does, despite a couple of problems that related to my own unfamiliarity with the controls as much as the game itself. It's possible, in this early build, to nudge the cue ball when lining up a shot and the game doesn't punish that flagrant breaking of the rules. Presumably that's because it'd be unfair to penalise people simply for struggling to calibrate their own bodies within virtual space and that's a wise decision. But it does speak to the loose nature of the cue control, which is inch-perfect once a shot is locked in place but slightly hindered by the weightlessness of the cue when initially leaning toward the table to find an angle.

But the controls are smart. That 'locking in' of a shot is achieved through a simple button press, affixing the tip of the cue to the ball so that specific angles, spin and power can be applied. And they're all applied by...moving your arms, wrists and fingers almost precisely as you would at a real table.

It's uncanny. So uncanny that I not only leaned on the table, I tried to look at my watch at one point. Leave me in there any longer and I'd be standing at the bar, complaining about how long it takes to get served when you're not a local.

Oh, and I was rubbish at it, just as I'm rubbish at real pool. In the end I resorted to placing beer bottles all over the table and driving the cue ball through them, then throwing the shards of glass at the people around the bar. Obviously, I'd never do that in the real world but I wondered, out loud, if the VR people would ever respond.

I played a fair bit of pool in my college years. I was never any good but always had a good time. Playing pool is a uniquely fantastic social event that captures the perfect balance between having enough things to do to keep you distracted and entertained and providing just enough pauses in between to keep things social and conversations flowing. I understand the attraction pool has as a real life activity. I'm not, however, sold at all on it as a virtual experience. And I think that's why I actually really enjoyed Pool Nation FX.

I've heard this game take a few knocks for not being as realistic as some if its competition. To be fair, I've not actually played that competition and don't plan on doing so. Because it is in deviating from the hyper-realism where I derived the most pleasure. It's like the putting greens in an old Tiger Woods golf game. It's nothing like really playing golf but that's precisely why it was so much fun. I'm not trying to say that Pool Nation FX is to pool what Mario Kart is to racing. Far from it. There is a very good, polished sim under the hood that combines some solid ball physics powered by the Unreal engine behind a very slick presentation. This game can and does pass as a proper pool simulator, but that's not where I found it to be the most fun. The joy came from cranking down the shot difficulty and smashing through games, tournaments, even a career at breakneck speed. When you absolve yourself of the minutiae of eyeing up there perfect angle unassisted and just let the virtual guidelines of the easier shot difficulties take that burden, there is a super fun time waster that lets you blaze through one game after another, and leaves you thinking "hmm, well maybe there's time for just one more." And that's every bit a hallmark of a good game as is super-realism, if not more.

And then building off that, as your talents progress and the time-wasting becomes too easy, you can take those training wheels off by tweaking that shot difficulty back up. So out of the box it provides an easy joy of burning through games but also has the room to grow with you as you want to challenge yourself that little bit more and more.

A bit about the nuts and bolts of the game: the graphics are excellent. Everything seems to be lying under bright lights with a fresh coat of wax. The balls and cue positively shine in these condition and the gleam is striking. There is a lot of detail but some of it crosses over into the unnecessary. There is a wide range of decals you purchase to customize the felt of your table, but they do little more than become a distraction. Also each pool hall gets a nice, sweeping flyby before each match showing off the detail of the locales. But why? As soon as you rack up the balls there is never a reason to wander an eye past the edges of the table itself. A lot of detail ends up going into a background that only really comes into play as eye candy for those few seconds as the match loads. Better than nothing though, right?

There is also a good suite of options for skins for your balls and cues. You can use your career mode earnings to upgrade one at a time, or purchase the whole lot with a micro transaction, but there isn't a proper gallery to show them off, or even one to get a solid look as you browse the catalogue. I'm pretty sure that one cue is a light saber and man, do want; but from the photo description it's not actually all that clear.

The music is there, but it's pretty meh. There's no reason not to turn it off in the options and just kick your own tunes in the background. Which actually makes a lot of sense when you think of how pivotal a jukebox can be to a real pool hall experience anyway.

There are enough game modes to keep things interesting. 8 ball, 9 ball and snooker are all represented as games and you can play online, quick matches, or that career mode where you wander the globe and take those virtual flybys of pool halls working your way through the brackets. There are also daily challenges for extra loot and an endurance mode that adds balls to the table at regular intervals and becomes a frantic race against an ever increasingly crowded bit of felt real estate.

On PC you can use mouse and keyboard or there is controller support. Both are a bit of a mixed bag. I found the controller was much easier to fly around the table and change viewing angles but wasn't crazy about the shot and power mechanics up pulling pack on the sticks. Switching to the mouse was the sweet spot for me. It became more cumbersome to sweep around the alternate table views, but the shot mechanics were bang on and using the left click to shoot and the right click to skip though the resulting animations (and especially when my opponent was shooting) created the bliss of blazing through matches and trying to squeeze in that one more.

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