Heard of Pool Party for the Wii? Chances are if you're reading this, you haven't and this may be the first time you've heard it. It's a game that completely went under the radar and will likely be continuously overlooked. The title was first released over in the US last September and released early last month over in Europe. With very little text to translate it makes you wonder what took so long. Perhaps there was some debate as to whether the game should be inflicted on gamers here...

Pool Party unfortunately does very little to impress the casual gamer, which is the market the game is trying to appeal too. When loading up the game you get a few options to choose from, naturally single or multi-player. Once in the Single player section you can select from a variety of modes to play such as Pool 8/9/10/15 balls, straight pool, rotation pool, black jack, full snooker, short snooker and finally killer. That's pretty much what the game has to offer. Of course you do have a few options to customize things such as the environment, table, ball sets, cues, characters, songs and table speeds. That's the entire game summarised meaning this review will be rather short compared to others since the game can be summed in a matter of sentences. With the basics over now it's time for the controls.

Even a flame design canvas can't help enhance your shot skills.

After playing around with the game for a while, I still can't get use to the controls all that well. The first time I loaded up the game and used the Wii pointer to change the angle I wanted to take my shot at, I thought I broke the game. The screen kept spinning around the pool table and I kept trying to move the pointer to the other side to try and stop it, but alas, I started spinning again in the opposite direction. The pointer can be that sensitive when you're not entirely sure of the controls. Some practice later I got the hang of it, though the slightest movement will move the screen, so using the joy stick on the Nunchuck proved to be much simpler. Now for actually making your shot. Truthfully, I still don't know what exactly you need to do to make a shot after all this time. The controls are that bad. What's supposed to happen is you hold down the B trigger where a 'power bar' appears to show the power of your shot which can be adjusted by pulling back on the Nunchuck analogue stick or if your lucky it works, pull back on the Wii Remote like you do in real life, though in this, it barely ever works. Then obviously you're supposed to jerk the Wii Remote forward to take your shot, but again, it barely ever works. So after random button pressing and moving the Wii Remote about, it finally takes that shot you wanted, but not how you wanted it. The controls feel incredibly tacked on and if you actually paid for this game, you will feel outrightly conned.

As for your A.I opponents, they can be incredibly smart or incredibly stupid, no in between. With the smart A.I they will pot balls like nothing so you have a high chance of losing badly or a high chance of winning. When you see the balls move about on the screen after a shot, you can't help but notice the ball movements are completely irregular and unnatural showing incredible physics and nothing like its real life counter part. For a Wii game that was released a while after the actual console, you would expect much more in terms of standards.

The menus throughout the game are basic and as for the music, well I can't remember hearing any music at all. Sadly that's how bad it is. The worst part is, online flash game sites will have a better pool game. Remember Wii Play? Stick with the pool game on that instead of paying for this.

Ultimately, Poor Party is just a badly done shovelware game that was made as a quick casual game that was developed hoping to make a profit of the growing success of the Wii. Which it won't. It makes you wonder why the developers even bothered to create such a game.