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World Championship Snooker 2003 Review
Mark Simons
08/07/2003
Codemaster's latest snooker title, does it sink the black, or is it nudging the brown for a foul...
We must admit to not being the biggest snooker fans in the world; pool is about as far as we can make it, and none of this stripes and spots stuff either, simple red and yellow pub-rules pool - on a small table, where you have to play from a stupid angle because one wall is too close to the table.
Snooker is too hard - too tactical and not offensive enough in our illiterate opinion, however this might just be because we're rubbish at it. As ever though, if you can't do something in real-life, you can guarantee on a videogame to raise your standards. Praise be to Codemasters for releasing World Championship Snooker 2003, and letting us live out all our fantasies of playing at The Crucible, alongside Ronnie O'Sullivan with John Virgo dissecting our every shot.
After an intro sequence that gets the blood pumping, it has the same music from the BBC snooker programs, you'll find a whole host of options. This isn't just straight snooker; we have pool - eight and nine ball, trick shots, fun games, coaching and a career mode that takes you from lowly snooker hall loiterer to potential world champion - provided you have the skill and haven't potted too many pints down the pub beforehand.
The core of the game is very solid; Codemasters have over time developed an excellent physics engine, which ensures everything looks realistic in motion. Hitting the balls feels natural (!) and is very intuitive; you set the power with the analogue stick, and just tap 'X' to have your player hit it. We would have liked to have something like a professional mode where there was some swing system, similar to the lovely system employed in Tiger Woods 2003, however snooker/pool is mainly about the shot preparation at the end of the day. You will spend most of your time aiming your shot, planning where to position the cue ball and just how much power you need. Top, back and side spin are easily added by holding the circle button and aiming, square allows you to choose the angle of the cue and if you click 'R3' down you reset your cue position to normal, for when you confuse yourself trying stupidly fancy shots.
Once you have got to grips with the core of the game, and it shouldn't take too long, the hard part, as ever in this sport, is the judgment of the shots, rather than the technique, that's not to say snooker is easy, but erm, it's hardly speed rock climbing. Yes... Anyway, once you feel ready to start a career you have the option to design your character: head, body type and which hand they use - most importantly you can choose the type of waistcoat you have. Progress through the career mode, well, win money in the career mode, and you can buy all kinds of new things like locations, cues, tables, waistcoats and trousers. Suitable rewards for the snooker fan we feel.
The career mode is quite challenging and takes you all over the world against the pros; maybe this is just our innate lack of ability at snooker, but the artificial intelligence is rather hard, and you really do need to be on the ball to avoid sitting on the sidelines for long periods of time. Perhaps the best way to enjoy this game is against a friend who is similarly bad or good.
Codemasters have done an excellent job of presenting this game, well, for the most part. First of all can we just dedicate a sentence to the fact that this game has a widescreen mode, we're really starting to get annoyed with games that don't have this feature in this day and age, especially if they have their cut-scenes in widescreen, just makes us say 'why ay auughta!' and raise a comedic fist in the direction of the developers, well done the Codemasters. Sorry, where was I - presentation, that's right. Perhaps it was a little unlucky of this game to be put on the PlayStation 2 right after an extended Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution session. Whilst the balls and table look exquisite, the backgrounds and characters look a little ropey. The character animation is actually rather impressive, all except for the walking animation, it looks like they've got a snooker cue shoved where the sun don't shine!!!
Character models are not that detailed or defined, with the face textures making some of them look positively scary, we're not quite talking Virtua Tennis zombie levels, but it's not far off. The initial pub background are functional, however the textures just, well they don't seem to gel, perhaps they should have used some television style focusing to make it look more realistic (we urge developers to use depth-filtering just to shut Mark up - Ed). That said, we do like the way that the proper events are presented with a fully three-dimensional crowd, which really does add to the atmosphere, all of them seemingly unique and doing different things.
When your opponent is taking a shot, you can speed up time by pressing circle, obviously this only works against the computer, so unfortunately you can't force your mates to hurry up... The point is when it's all speeded up it looks rather like TV footage. Even more TV-like is the way that Codemaster's have implemented some excellent direction using some very dynamic TV camera movements - snooker fans will just lap up the pocket shots. With the quality of graphics on the balls and cloth, detailed animation and the fully three-dimensional crowd, this all begins to look very realistic. Chuck in a few subtle effects such as the way chalk dust makes it on to the table and having the runs for the balls down the side of the table fully modeled, results in something that looks just like the real thing to our uneducated eyes.
Sound is rather good, from the opening theme tune being spot on - they couldn't have used anything else - through to Dennis Taylor and John Virgo's commentary, little tip, which is nice and relaxing, well unless they're berating you for being bad. The sound of balls hitting balls and cushions is all as accurate as we can discern, and you shouldn't have any complaints.
Codemasters have done an excellent job with this game, it has everything a snooker fan would want, and actually provides a great game of pool as well. If you like snooker then this is easily the best game on a console to live out your dreams of a 147 at the crucible; if you have a passing interest in snooker or pool the quality of the game is high enough to provide a good deal of enjoyment, but the multi-player mode is where it's at. You may argue that for the cost of the game you could play a lot of real snooker or pool, and you'd be right, but that doesn't matter, because you try dressing up in a Union Jack waistcoat at your local boozer and see what happens - you'll probably end up with a cue inserted the painful way for a spinal support, so play it safe and get this instead.
