Premium Pool

Pool sims are certainly not scarce on the PC, especially since they can be found on almost every Flash games website and on every social media platform. However, most of them are just crude representations of the actual sport, since it takes a lot of effort to simulate how the balls interact with each other in a realistic manner, especially since the online medium comes with strict file size requirements.

Premium Pool is an arcade simulator designed to make it as simple as possible for you to enjoy the game with your friends, by yourself, or with people from all over the world. Simplicity is great, but it can also be too much sometimes, especially when it affects the gameplay and the simulation itself. Unfortunately, this happens to be the case with Premium Pool.

To begin with, the most annoying thing about the game is that nothing feels right, which is mostly obvious in the way the balls move on the table. Your hits do not seem to carry any force, and the balls just stop rolling all of a sudden, as if there are puddles of mud on the tablecloth. Not only is this annoying, but it also hinders your ability to use real world knowledge and techniques, because nothing works as you would expect.

There are also few game modes to choose from, since you can only play offline against yourself (no AI included), online against random players, or with a Steam friend. 8 Ball is the only option as well, although that’s not too much of a shock for a pool sim. On the other hand, it becomes a problem when the simulation is awful and there’s nothing to keep you engaged or distracted.

You could be lured by the things you can buy with the coins you win after each victory, such as new ball sets, tablecloths or cues, but they cost a lot of coins in most cases, and the matches have an entry fee as well. If you run out of coins, you can purchase more using real currency, and there’s zero incentive to do so, given the state of the game.

Premium Pool is in a rough shape at the moment, and it plays like a rushed game that no one bothered to refine or polish. The physics matter the most in a simulator such as this one, and they have nothing in common with reality in this case.