World Snooker Championship 2007 (PS3)

Experience the thrill of competing at the Crucible in the only officially licensed game of World Snooker. Featuring 104 snooker players including greats of the game such as Ronnie O`Sullivan, Steve Davis, Stephen Hendry, all of the official tournaments and venues and commentary from John Parrott, Steve Davis and John Virgo.

• Features many of the players from the Snooker and Pool circuits, the PS3 version contains 32 out of 96 licensed snooker players and 14 out of 64 Pool players, including Shaun Murphy, Ronnie O`Sullivan, Earl Strickland and Efren Reyes.
• Improved 3D front-end, providing an atmospheric ante-room.
• Incorporates 5 different championship modes: Snooker, Pool (9/8 Ball), Hybrid (customised Snooker/Pool tours), Golden Cue (challenging former champions in Snooker and Pool) and TrickShot.
• New gameplay mechanics, including a Cueball Target Indicator (where your Cueball will stop on the table, according to power, bounce and spin).
• Next-generation graphics, including a revamped Character Creation system with more realistic features.
• Extra games modes for friendly play: Versus and QuickPlay, with existing matches plus Billiards and Bar Billiards.
• Coaching for all game modes: Snooker, 8 Ball Pool, 9 Ball Pool, Free Snooker and Free Pool, with access to official Rules for all modes.
• Online gameplay with various radand unranked games: Snooker, 9 Ball Pool, 8 Ball Pool, 3 Ball Pool, Rotation, Bank and Billiards.
• Familiar commentary from John Parrot, John Virgo and Steve Davis, with new voices for the Pool circuit.

Although it’s hard to make snooker seem terribly sexy (Sega try their best by making everyone on the box cover scowl like they’re in a Steven Segal movie) the fact is it has an enormous fan base and it actually works really well as a video game. As with any yearly update this isn’t massively different to the last game in the series: it features plenty of celebrity snooker players, (rubbish) commentary from John Parrot and John Virgo, plenty of game modes and online play on the Xbox. Although there is a tutorial mode, the game is intuitive enough for you to pick and play from the off, especially if you start the career mode and begin to slowly work your way up the ranks with your own custom character.

The biggest challenge in the game though is having the will power to turn off all the control assists which initially help to make the game so easy to play. A new cue ball position zone marker makes things a lot easier than previous games, as does helpful aiming arrows indicating when and how hard you should hit a ball. Lining up shots still isn’t quite as easy as it should be though and altering the strength of the shot on the right analogue stick also feels less accurate than it should do. There are a few bugs and glitches too, particularly around foul balls. Graphically the game won’t win any awards, with poor animation and zombie like players, but that’s really not what the game is about. Until next year at least this is the best, and only, next gen snooker game around.
HARRISON DENT