At the most basic level, the game is drab and even ugly, with bland menus, rigid character models and sluggish loading times. No, where the game stumbles is in the other details, the connective tissue that takes a solid ball-physics model and turns it into an appealing game. Assuming you line your shot up correctly, there's tangible pleasure in seeing the white shave past a rogue red to sink the black, just as you envisioned. The game engine is capable of delivering nuanced control, enabling skilled players to pull off swerves, safeties and even jump shots with millimetre precision. Suffice to say that the green baize action is where WSC 09 is at its strongest. Although things have been refined since then, there's clearly a limit to how much more realistic the physics behind each click-clack shot can be, which doesn't leave a lot of room for new titles such as this to distinguish themselves. One of the problems is that cue-based videogames pretty much hit an evolutionary ceiling after Archer Maclean created his Jimmy White series in the early 1990s. Like most niche sports games, the latest in Blade Interactive's officially licensed World Snooker Championship series hides the alluring curves of its deep gameplay under an off-putting baggy jumper of basic presentation and clunky interfaces.
