Hustle Kings PS3 Review

by Iain Alexander

Most people’s experiences with pool stop at hitting some shiny balls with a big stick after having one too many in their local. If it goes badly the ball pings off the table and lands in a fat bloke’s pint. That’s never happened to me, honest. Even so, when Hustle Kings hit the PSN Store it seemed like a much safer way to enjoy a few games, so I downloaded it and got my chalk ready.

The first thing you’ll notice is how polished the game is. From the opening screen through to the games themselves, it looks fantastic. The locations are varied and crisp, and the tables have different colours and logos with lots of combinations of the two, so you’ll see plenty of different designs through the game. As for the balls themselves, they’ve been polished within an inch of their lives and look great, reflecting light realistically from any angle.

The best place to start is the tutorial mode. This is a set of mini-lessons teaching you the basic controls and letting you choose from one of two control methods -- a simple “click-at-the-right-time” option and the more satisfying use of the left stick to swing the cue. The tutorial introduces spin, power, curving and jumping the ball, and is a great way to get to grips with the dynamics of the game.

The main offline part of the game is the career mode. Here you start in the Rookie tournaments, and begin to build up winnings by playing games against computer opponents. Some games cost nothing to play but only give small winnings, but once you get a few credits together you can start to buy into the bigger games. There are a range of game types, from 9 ball through to cut-throat with plenty of others to try. Sadly, Hustle Kings doesn’t share the rules of these games with you so it’s worth having Wikipedia on standby to look up the rules. As you progress through the higher levels the challenges get tougher and the stakes higher -- you can win or lose a lot of money in each game. You have trick shots and challenges to do along the way, and these help to add variety and really keep things interesting. Once you’re out of the Rookie category things get pretty tough pretty quickly, and you’ll find yourself losing quite a bit of cash while you improve your skills. It’s frustrating at times, I lost count of the times I muttered “you’ve got to be kidding…” under my breath as the computer made another unbelievable shot, but it makes you all the more determined to improve and avoid mistakes.

Elsewhere you have an offline multiplayer mode where you can choose game type, table design and colour, location and other aspects and play against others in the room. Given that pool is generally a sociable game, this is where the game really excels. You also have a dedicated trick shot mode where you can work through trick shots you’ve unlocked in the career mode, and a shop, where you can trade in your hard earned credits for new cues, better chalk and new balls sets. The expensive glowing neon balls really are something to behold!

Jump online and you’re given the chance to join a lobby and hustle other players, where you send a challenge for a certain number of credits and battle it out to win each other’s virtual cash. This makes for some very tense and exciting games, although you can avoid this and play a friendly game if that’s more your thing. The online games work great, and is likely to add a lot of longevity to the game.

So you’ll have guessed that Hustle Kings really impressed me. There are other really neat features here that other games miss out like the ability to save a replay of any shot or entire game and upload it to YouTube, and being able to play your own music instead of the default tunes. It all adds up to a great game which could easily keep you going for a long time, just keep an eye on the sudden difficulty spike and lack of game explanations.