[LEGACY] 9 Balls

9 Balls is indeed a billiards game, what happens when it is 8 balls instead?

This is the question I asked when I opened the title screen and instead of “play”, “options” and “exit” I was met with “8 balls” and “9 balls”.
Now this isn’t relevant, obviously, but it was a lingering question. Why call it 9 balls when you have an 8 balls game too?

This is a shadow of a billiards game, it is essentially the “typing on an Xbox/PlayStation console without one of those little keyboard add-ons” version of billiards. Everything is so slow, clunky, and unintuitive.
Instead of the cue being able to swing around freely as you’d position yourself around the billiard table, you have to pull, pull, pull, pull the cue round to where you want it to face. It’s clunky, and it’s sticky, and quite frankly, virtually unplayable.

On the other hand, the ball physics are to die for *sarcasm*. Whether you feel a bit more stricken when you attempt to line up the balls for a break, and see the pathetic click and hardly moving balls despite the strength-o-meter being at the highest possible level, or later when you attempt to take a long shot on a perfectly positioned ball, the meter is unable to provide the strength necessary to pocket the ball.
The ball physics suck. I can’t even tell if it’s the “friction” on the table that’s causing this or a shitty mistake in the mechanics of the maths behind the ball movement.

The only time that the ball physics don’t suck is when I got bored with the game and started pelting all the balls full force and eventually managed to send the 8-ball flying off the table. I had a good giggle at the fact it could do that, and, and I was a little happier for a split second, then it happened. The next turn started, and the 8-ball didn’t reset, or come back at all. It was just gone. Keep on playing after that and the next turn around, *poof,* all the balls disappear from the table and the game is rendered unplayable.

If your game is going to have ball physics where things are hitting off each other at high speeds, things will fly into the air. Please, for fuck’s sake, put a damn invisible dome around the table to prevent balls from getting out.

Pros:

• It looks like a billiards game, doesn’t look too cheap. (like all the graphics being made in Paint.)
• No graphical or music issues or glitches.
• Unexpected extra game mode (+1 point)
• Doesn’t crash on load or during game.
• Good cue sight (seeing where you’re firing the ball), some billiards games don’t give you that at all.

Cons:

• You literally have to drag the cue across the table again and again and again to just get it to where you want to aim.
• No option to turn off the cue sight, some people may want to play without the visual aide.
• Balls have too much friction, or the maths just wrong?
• Balls fly off into the sunset and never come back, thus breaking the game.

Price: £0.79
Time To Complete: N/A
Achievements: None
Cards: No
Worth The Money: No, despite being as cheap as it is. Just no.

Zesty Rating
1 Out Of 10
Boring, clunky, sticky and barely fun game of billiards. Not worth the spare change in your pocket, buy yourself a Freddo. The only redeeming thing about this game is that it looks the part, and it doesn’t randomly crash on you for no reason.

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Please bear in mind that this is a repost. There have been slight changes to the post such as spelling and grammar fixes, images added, and things generally organised in the fashion I'd like them presented.  Apart from that, the main context of the review has not changed, opinion has not been altered and everything is sacred. I look forward to writing for you all again.