World Snooker Championship 2007 Review

By Keza MacDonald Published 15 January, 2007

Xbox 360's big break?

Version tested: Xbox 360

World Snooker Championship is effectively two games in one, these days - thanks to the American audience's apparent aversion to the sombre and gentlemanly world of snooker, the pool championships (in all their many forms) have been built up over the years to the point where they are now more numerous and just as comprehensive as the snooker tournaments. Good news for pool players, I suppose, but as a snooker fan it just looks like more and more versions of the exact same thing to me - a pattern that has arguably come to define sports games these days. In most cases (snooker's in particular), we've been making them long enough now to have perfected the mechanics of the particular sport. For official licences, progress now lies in making them look and feel as authentic as they play.

Just like the last instalment, WCS2007 plays about as authentically as you could wish of a snooker game. New players can rely on the selection of tutorials to introduce them to the importance of spin and cue elevation, but anyone with a decent knowledge of a real-life snooker table can expect to jump right into the competitions. The career mode takes your customised protagonist through an enormous selection of tournaments and qualifiers before allowing him a crack at the World Championship itself. There is satisfying depth to the gameplay, and though the positional and directional indicators might seem a little over-generous to more experienced players, they can be turned off. The computer players are well weighted, but still represent a challenge in even the most insignificant of qualifying matches - mistakes are harshly punished, and although the game can feel unfair at times, it's never any worse than real-life snooker.

'World Snooker Championship 2007' Screenshot 1

The indicators make things rather easy for non-beginners - unfortunately the only options are on or off, with no graded assists.

Accomplished though it is, however, WCS2007's simulation of pool and snooker is hardly an advancement over its predecessors' - the differences here are minimal, the chief ones being Xbox Live play (which requires a lot of patience) and the Golden Cue and Hybrid tournaments, which allow you to mix and match different cue sports over the course of a single tournament. But then, the series' core gameplay didn't need fixing. As with almost any sports franchise, you'd expect the chief improvements to lie in the presentation. It's here that WCS2007 is genuinely flawed; this would have looked dated three years ago. Its sombre presentation is appealing and befits the sport, but the confusing and unhelpful menu system and stiff, slightly frightening player models are very, very out of date, as is the repetitive commentary. Almost every annoyance can be turned off in the depths of some options menu or another, but even so the lack of polish is disappointing.

'World Snooker Championship 2007' Screenshot 2

Really not up to standard, is it. The players' grimaces and celebratory smiles are near-indistinguishable from each other.

Especially in comparison with its sports-game contemporaries, this apparent laziness sours the experience of playing WSC2007. You'd expect the tables and balls, at least, to look nice and shiny and realistic, but the entire play environment is fuzzy and generally has the air of a cheapish 2003 PC game. The ambient noise is horrible, bad-quality, tinny chuntering from the audience, which runs on a very short loop, as does the commentary - I'm used to jarringly general comments in sports games, but Blade could have recorded more than five of them. The menu system is the only thing about this game that's pretty, and it's extremely confusing - it took about ten minutes to figure out how to start a two-player game. If you're a fan of snooker - and anyone who buys this almost certainly will be - it's extremely disappointing to see the game's 32 licensed pro players cueing the ball like someone's drunk uncle at a wedding thanks to the poor motion-capture, and hearing John Virgo say, "He's not left himself a lot of options here," for the sixteenth time in twenty minutes would lessen anyone's affection for the sport.

World Snooker Championship 2007 is a competent and comprehensive simulation of the actual sport, but there is no flair in its gameplay or presentation. It's snooker (and pool, and billiards) by numbers, with none of the realistic-looking players or visual authenticity or visible effort of its golf, table tennis or basketball compatriots on the Xbox 360. Really, we have now reached the stage where sports games should attempt to deliver as effectively in the presentation area as they do elsewhere, and this series appears to be making absolutely no progress on that front (or any other front, for that matter). WCS2007 is, as ever, a reliable a bet for snooker fans, and the Xbox 360's only realistic snooker simulation - next time, though, we expect a more up-to-date experience.

6 / 10

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About Keza MacDonald

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Comments (26) Latest comment 6 months ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • jonsaan #1 5 years ago

    Snooker loopy nutz are wii...

    Top down all day long for me. sometimes 3d isn't better, just more fiddly.
    Edited by 1 at 15/01/07 @ 14:55

  • afray #2 5 years ago

    When the target market is basically the UK alone, I bet it's tough to plough the same amount of development cash at this game as, say, a Madden or FIFA. Which unfortunately means one of the first things to be cut is presentation.

    Not that I'm excusing it.

  • Dark_Stranger #3 5 years ago

    Even the characters in the game cant take the excitement (pic 2, chap sitting down next to TV camera).

  • Krusty #4 5 years ago

    Glad I didn't impulse buy this yesterday then.
    Picked up NWN2 for the PC instead since I know the reviews for that have been good.

    I must say the presentation for the game looks horrid for a "next-gen" title.
    Surprised Microsofts quality team didn't kick off or something...

    Still can't beat the Virtual Pool series on the PC then.

    Krusty

  • pretence #5 5 years ago

    Have to agree with ManicMiner on this... Poor, lazy review... Please play the game the next time...

  • yazooo #6 5 years ago

    Happen to agree with manicminer as well. Happen to love the real game of snooker as well, so playing this has been great fun. The depth of the game, and the positional indicator is perfect. Doesn't make the game too easy, just the right amount of playable, giving you a fair chance at the tough computer opponent. The pressure part of the game is excellent, as well as the stats of your own player you have to work on. Lots of other EA sports games have the 'polish' but not the depth.

  • rotj #7 5 years ago

    As someone who isn't too big into snooker per se, but is somewhat intrigued by the puzzle game nature of a billiard game (that covers snooker and pool, right?), what would you gents recommend me, between this and Bankshot Billiards 2?

  • samk #8 5 years ago

    MMUK, at the risk of being thrown my coat and ordered to get out:

    It's only a game, son...

  • Ceatlan #9 5 years ago

    Have they implemented a analogue control method more akin to the good pool/snooker games on the PC of recent years yet ?

    Or is it still the old fashioned aim, set power and then click button to play shot rubbish ?

    I mean if the console golf games have managed to move over to analogue swing controls, why do the console snooker games still have to lag behind ?

  • tobs #10 5 years ago

    Wish this was making an appearance on PC this time around. :(

  • samk #11 5 years ago

    "it might only be a game, but a bunch of people will have spent a lot of time and effort making said game, only to have their sales figures reduced by an inaccurate review"

    This is where it's possible to trot out the usual "a review is someone's opinion", "6/10 is a decent score at EG", etc arguments. WSC2007 isn't the first game to receive a review people don't agree with, and it certainly isn't going to be the last.

    But bravo on your informative posts filling in other readers on what the review evidently doesn't. :)

  • DUFFKING #12 5 years ago

    >>MMUK, at the risk of being thrown my coat and ordered to get out:

    >>It's only a game, son...

    /starts singing

    It's only a game, so put up a real good fight.
    I'm gonna be snookering you tonight....
    Edited by 1 at 15/01/07 @ 16:39

  • rotj #13 5 years ago

    Between this and BSB, do either of them let you simulate cue control with the analogue sticks? Maybe one for swing and the other for angle?

  • Eighthours #14 5 years ago

    Bloody hell, comments thread hijacked by snooker game fanboys! :) :) :)

    Now I've seen everything!

    Manic, you haven't mentioned how the balls look like they're underwater on the pool tables, due to the insane reflections on the underside of the balls! An amusing glitch of sorts.



  • afray #15 5 years ago

    MMUK: Krusty, afray and others have all said "oh, so its rubbish then?"

    Don't believe I said it was rubbish. I said as it couldn't possibly have the budget of a big EA sport title, expecting big EA sports title presentation is harsh.

  • stevencole7 #16 5 years ago

    Which game is best for the money then?..........Bankshot Billiards 2, which is 1200 Points (about £10-00) or World Snooker Championship 2007 which you should get for about £40-00 on the net............

  • BBIAJ #17 5 years ago

    MMUK, there wasn't a version for 2006 released last year, so I'm assuming that you mean the 2005 version released the previous year?

    Also, can anyone tell me if this is easier than the X-Box version of 2005, as I found that to be bastard hard from the off compared to the preferable PSP version.

  • Errol #18 5 years ago

    WHERE'S THE CUEBALL GOING ?

    WHERE'S THE CUEBALL GOING ?

  • jaxon58 #19 5 years ago

    "a bunch of people will have spent a lot of time and effort making said game"

    Blade Interactive = a bunch of not nice people.

  • barchetta #20 5 years ago

    Image 2: looks like the cameraman has lost the will to live.

  • squeakyg #21 5 years ago

    What a short review, by someone who doesn't seem to care to explain the game mechanics in much depth. Hmm.

  • smelly #22 5 years ago

    >Blade Interactive = a bunch of not nice people.


    HAHAHA! So true!

  • urban #23 5 years ago

    i never liked seeing arrows.

  • sharpfish #24 5 years ago

    WCS2004 was the best (cos I worked on the QA of it) ;)

    Of course I'm not entirely serious.
    Give the game a break though, it's one for the niche snooker crowd who appreciate that someone is actually doing these kinds of games with the aunthenticity. Presentation isn't upto Square/Capcom/Nintendo standards but this is a small outfit making this.

    Possibly the game should have been more budget price (£30 instead of £40 online).

  • mkreku #25 5 years ago

    Seriously, I learned more about World Snooker Championship 2007 from ManicMinerUK's first post than I did from the entire review. I do review games myself, and I know it's a chore sometimes (trust me, after a few hundred reviews of Ribbit King and the like, even games can become torture) but ALWAYS treat the games professionally. Don't dismiss games because you don't (personally) particularly care for the genre! Play through it, play through the last incarnation in the series (if there is one and you haven't played it before) and then rate it on the grounds of what is it, what it aims to be and the competition on the market. Do snooker enthusiasts really care if EA's latest NBA Live Street Xtreme ++ has more lifelike player models? I wouldn't think so.

    Bad review, great post by ManicMinerUK.

  • powerup #26 5 years ago

    Bad review, great post by ManicMinerUK.

    +1

  • barnard666 #27 5 years ago

    I simply dont see why I'd get this one when I have WCS05 sat at home. it looks the same visually, and some adjusted gameplay aids arent going to make the difference!
    I almost feel like Manic works for Sega from his totally non negative comments...

    Sega could do with trying to up their game rigt now, Sonic, phantasy star, now this...its like they developed these games 5 years ago and put them on a shelf.

  • berkowitzjonathan05 #28 6 months ago

    I really can't understand how the looping thing managed to get past the testers. Jonathan Berkowitz