3D Pool: High Roller

One wonders if the career of pool hustler has but a short time left before the health and safety killjoys have their way.

Think about it – the workplace is a bar room with all the inherent dangers of secondhand cigarette smoke. This barroom is normally somewhere abroad (Las Vegas, New Orleans and Monaco are popular haunts), necessitating copious amounts of air travel and the attendant risk of deep-vein thrombosis – not to mention all the carbon emissions. Then there's the leaning over the table itself, surely a quick route to an iffy back when you're wearing the trendy get-up that your job requires, rather than a comfy and flexible suit/waistcoat combo of a snooker pro.

It all means that games like this one, 3D Pool: High Roller, will be little oases of money-making for your otherwise unemployed hustler who can't afford the insurance payments or stand the restrictions placed on their workplaces by the Health and Safety Executive.

But if that ever comes to pass, the hustlers are in for another disappointment. 3D Pool: High Roller fails to capture the feel of the game it aims to simulate, and can't adequately recreate the atmosphere to compensate.

It all starts with the visuals. If you've got a high-end (and we mean it – this is a very demanding game in terms of handset hardware) phone then you can enjoy the looks you can see in the screenshots here. But on anything less and you end up with a disembodied table floating in a black limbo.

We're used to seeing corners being cut when it comes to 3D visuals; after all, in order to make the important elements (table, balls) look as good as possible, other less-essential parts can be scrimped on. But when the table's set against a plain black backdrop it just feels empty and devoid of atmosphere.

Things aren't helped in this matter by the balls, which seem to slide rather than roll, and a physics engine that doesn't convey any feeling of weight to the balls and their motion.

In fact, judging the angle and power of your shots is one of the hardest parts of 3D Pool: High Roller. Even though there's the option of having a target line imposed on the table, showing where the cue ball is going to go when you strike it, the visuals aren't detailed enough to convey the minute adjustments you make with the controls.

A case in point: if you're lining up an angled shot to a corner pocket, you can press left or right a couple of times on your handset's controls but notice no difference in the direction of the aiming line. When you miss a tight shot because of this it's more than annoying: it's unforgivably frustrating.

This is exacerbated by the tough computer opponents that you come across in your travels as a professional pool hustler. Even in your first stop, Monaco, you're challenged by the local talent to a couple of trick shot competitions and a game of 8-ball, none of which are a pushover.

If you do manage to beat the natives you'll earn prize money and unlock new opponents and challenges. Your winnings can be spent on new kit or bet on whether you can pull off increasingly difficult and wacky trick shots. The latter soon incorporate tables that are entertainingly shaped, getting as far from your standard-issue rectangle as is possible, and it's this part of 3D Pool: High Roller that'll keep you playing.

But wondering what you'll encounter next isn't quite enough to bring you back on a long-term basis.

Of course, unbeknownst to us, the Health and Safety rules have probably wormed their way into mobile phone game legislature too, and it's all a plan to prevent us from getting RSI or encouraging gamers to take up pool hustling for real.

If so, they're doing a good job.