Sims Pool

Is this the ultimate in virtual cool for your iPod? Sink some stripes and create your own hustler in the new iPod game from EA games, Sims Pool.

We had played EA's Sims Bowling on the iPod before playing Sims Pool and found that it kept us amused for a good few hours so we were looking forward to sinking some stripes and honing up our follow through on Sims Pool.

One of our first observations however was that an awful lot of this game is replicated from Sims Bowling. The same menu system and characters are here (including the smug looking David who still hasn't learnt how to dress casually), the "Pad" is the same and even the sales assistant from the Bowling shop appears to be doing some moonlighting.

That said, the game impressed us with the use of the click wheel in the positioning of the Cue Ball. This is the best use of orientation on the iPod we have seen yet and hopefully this approach will get used to good effect in more games as it could be particularly effective in many styles of game.

As with Sims Bowling the controls are really authentic and if you are an average pool player you might even learn a thing or two about the real game by playing this.

We found this a more challenging game than Sims Bowling, getting accuracy on the length of shots takes a little practice as does getting the right amount of spin.

There are very similar awards for good performance as in Sims Bowling which is to be expected although I was a tad dispointed when our Sim received the same job offer at the same point in the game as in Sims Bowling. We reckon it would be quite cheeky of EA if the entire Sims journey was a complete replica of that in the Bowling edition.

The pixel perfect accuracy required for this game means you might get a little frustrated with this if you are playing it on the move but that and the duplication would be our only criticism of an otherwise really engaging game.

4 out of 5