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With the Snooker world championship round the corner, now would seem the perfect time to release an officially licensed game. With Codemasters no longer publishing a Snooker title, Blade Interactive, the developers of the old World Championship Snooker games, have found a new home at SEGA. On April 15th SEGA will release World Snooker Championship 2005 (see the subtle name change) and after a few frames with the PlayStation 2 version the new game seems to have shaped up well.
The most apparent change – something that we have been wanting for ages – is cue control via the right analogue stick. Much like how you swing a club in modern golf games, you use the right analogue stick to mimic the players cue action. This has been available in PC titles, such as the Virtual Pool series, for years and while a console game will never be able to match the precision offered by mouse control, this is a vast improvement over the slow and unrealistic power metre used in Blade Interactive’s previous titles.
Elsewhere nothing seems to have been overlooked, with all the shot options available to you. Within a few frames you’ll be adding side-spin or raising the butt of your cue as if the controller was an extension of your arm. Everything really is that intuitive. We’ll need more time to fully assess how well the new control method works, but early impressions are very positive.
Presentation is solid, with widescreen support being a nice surprise. While the visuals are a little jaggy and the player models rather primitive, you will soon be concentrating so much that the visuals barely matter. Blade Interactive have included a new player creation tool which allows you to build a character that suits you. This doesn’t appear to match what EA have done with the latest Tiger Woods game, but it does allow each player to put their own individual touch into their character. The games soundtrack, unfortunately, starts to irritate almost instantly, but thankfully the background music can be muted.
Negatives from our initial experience with the game are minimal: Load times could have been faster, the music is pretty terrible, and the menus are rather clumsy. We are being picky though; the game has that addictive quality that signifies a great sports game and that overshadows any minor niggles we have experienced.
With an online mode still to test, a new cueing system to get to grips with, a number of alternative cue-sports to play and a World Championship to win, we have a lot more to see in World Snooker Championship 2005. We’ll bring you the definitive review prior to game’s release on PlayStation 2, Xbox and PC on April 15th.
