WSC Real 09: World Snooker Championship

As the 360’s one and only snooker series, World Snooker Championship could easily rest on its laurels; however, it’s nice to see that this latest iteration has seen a considered attempt by Blade (who is now self-publishing, rather than working with Sega as before) to continue pushing the game out of pure simulation territory and more into the kind of open, accessible experience we’re used to seeing in EA Sports titles, with bells and whistles such as player customisation and training modes.

The character-creation facility, which, while hardly EA Game Face, enables you to stretch and pull a few generic head shapes and ethnicities into comedy game people. As you can see, we made someone who looks a bit like James Nesbitt and The Mummy actor John Hannah’s slightly bemused-looking love child, but it was still amazing how much more we rooted for a custom player, even when he strode into the arena wearing a hot pink shirt and neon green waistcoat.

Before you start competing, though, it’s sensible to get some training in. The training features, though fairly skeletal in their offerings – basically encouraging you to keep trying a shot until you make it, with minimal guidance beyond a simple demo – teach you just about enough to survive in a championship. While we’d perhaps have preferred a little more in the way of in-depth, guided tuition earlier on to help you work out some of the fineries of the game, and, as such, be better equipped to compete at professional level, there’s really no substitute for simply putting the time in and learning how to do it yourself, anyway. After a few games (and a few crushing failures) you begin to get a handle on what you need to do, and it all starts to go quite swimmingly.

In this way, it’s important not to become too disheartened too early with WSC Real 09, as once you’ve got the hang of the game’s basics, it becomes a pretty exciting experience, with plenty of championships of increasing difficulty to conquer as your skills increase.

A degree of polish is added to the experience as Blade has plundered the world of pro snooker to bring celebrity opponents to the higher-level competitions, and the commentating talents of the likes of John Virgo adds further authenticity. The screen HUD has also been borrowed from the BBC’s snooker coverage, so it’s possible to squint a bit and believe you’re really on telly.

Nevertheless, beneath the mixed successes of the new presentation work, WSC Real 09 remains the accurate, well-developed snooker simulator that it’s always been, with the ball physics behaving exactly as they should, supporting spins, jumps and never hesitating to faithfully replicate even the craziest trick shot. The only major new feature is the added ability to wander around the table in real-time to judge the approach for your next shot, which often proves useful, though you’ll still generally find yourself switching to classic overhead mode. Apart from that, this is just the same snooker it ever was, but, as the old adage goes: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.