I suspected 8 Ball Pool would be notoriously difficult to write about, what with pool being so devoid of skill that it’s not even shown on a dated media formats like television. A game that literally anyone with legs can play. Speaking of legs, I wonder if disabled people enjoy pool. They must do, because demand for pool games can’t just come from moon worshipping maniacs.
Aim stick, adjust stick power and hit sphere into pocket. Man what a thrill. How do sports games manage to innovate time and again? After the pointless tutorial I was tossed into an online 1v1 tournament against my will. The pace of the transition was almost too much for me and with my opening shot I scattered the orbs all over the table, it was chaos. I had managed to pot 2 globes of both suits.
I took a breather, things were getting intense. My opponent “guest 3678555” turned out to be as conniving as her name suggested. In my exhaustion, I had failed to notice that she had in fact taken her turn and my own turn time was almost up! I panicked and fired at random using maximum thrust, resulting in a potting of an ovoid for each team.
Staggered by my unexpected semi-competence, my opponent placed the cue ball into the regulatory rectangle and pondered for half of her allotted time (as per international pool pondering guidelines). Finally she lined up a shot… she was going to pot the black! She wiggled the cue back and forth, was this an intimidation tactic? Was it bravado? Was she going to bring the game to a dramatic climax and suddenly force her own loss?
First rule of pool: Don’t pot the cue ball
Second rule of pool: No giant disembodied fingers allowed.
No.
She was communicating with me. She was demonstrating just how tedious videogame pool is by threatening to liven it up… by losing.
She was right of course. And as she somehow missed and my turn arrived, I realised that I had downloaded a game that was more pointless than Bill Gates’ overdraft facility.
Don’t play this game. Don’t even play it if you like pool. Go and play pool for god’s sake, at least you’ll be within range of a reasonable amount of alcohol and someone who can chuck you into a ambulance if you collapse from despair.
8 ball pool is a packet of peanuts from a pub. Dry, stale and typically only enjoyable when heavily inebriated.
Games Whinge 