Windows Phone Thoughts: Rack 'Em Up: Virtual Pool Mobile v1.0 from Celeris reviewed

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Friday, June 25, 2004

Rack 'Em Up: Virtual Pool Mobile v1.0 from Celeris reviewed

Posted by Andy Whiteford in "SOFTWARE" @ 09:00 AM


When I got my first Pocket PC, the superb HP Jornada 565, I was looking for various programs and games and distinctly remember thinking that it would be great if someone ported Virtual Pool to the mobile format. Surely a 203mhz machine could run a game I was playing on work's Pentium 166mhz in days gone by. In the time that has passed since, I have looked at various pool simulations but nothing really came close to what I was looking for. So when Celeris offered up a beta of their Upcoming Virtual Pool Mobile I was very excited. When I then saw the fantastic screenshots I was a little concerned; this would need to run very quickly and smoothly to come close to the desktop experience. All my worries were blown away in an instant when I played my first beta game. So now this game has progressed to the final release, how has the mobile incarnation of this great series turned out? There's only one way to find out. Let's rack 'em up and shoot some pool.....

Installation
Installing Virtual Pool Mobile (VPM from now on) is very straight forward with a single executable giving the option of install location. Right away this is a point I would like to bring up - the total install is 11.4mb which is a little on the large side. I initially attributed the bulk of this to the movies contained in the game but later noticed that the room data took up almost half of the total. Not a real problem with today's storage media prices but worth mentioning for those who were expecting a more standard size of Pocket PC install. If you are stuggling to make up this kind of storage space though, I urge you to start finding programs to uninstall; you will be glad you did.


Figure 1: As good a place as any to start.

Rack 'em up
Firing up VPM brings up a nice menu system which is logically laid out. Top of the list is Quick Play which will be the game mode that a lot of users will use the most to kill small amounts of spare time. In here you have the option of a practice match, playing against another human opponent on the same device or taking on the computer at a selectable level. You can then pick the game type and the number of matches to play. The last option you have is Location with the choice restricted to the rooms that you have unlocked through career mode.


Figure 2: Keep your options open.


Figure 3: Quick Play is..... well, a quick way to play.

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