World Championship Pool 2004

"We've got the rcundest, shiniest balls in the business," the developer of World Championship Pool 2004 told us on a recent trip to the offices. It's a claim Td like to test, but one thing is certain: Blade's balls are definitely rounder and shinier than those in Pool Paradise Reviewed in issue 141,65 per cent. I doubt this is going to sway you one way or the other, but there's little else to divide them except for one important feature: the method of control.

World Championship Pool is a spin-off from the same team that delivered World Championship Snooker (spot the link) for Codemasters, and while it plays a perfectly accurate game there's one crucial difference between this and Pool Paradise. PP attempts to recreate authentic cueing action with your mouse, a modern innovation accepted as the norm in golf games. Here, you simply aim, set the power and click to unleash your shot, which means that while the game you're playing looks like pool - with 11 of the best poolsters in the world strutting their sticks - it certainly doesn't feel like it.

Funnily enough,while World Championship Snooker 2003 sported a perfectly playable game of pool, World Championship Pool also ships with a perfectly playable game of snooker - go figure. Some might say it's an ingenious way of getting people to pay for the same game twice, but if you haven't got the first it's a moot point. Less moot is the fact t