These thoughts are all about snooker, as I mainly snooker and almost no pool.
My strength is about "just above par", to say it in golf-terms. My highest break in normal mode is 36 and score regular around 20 breaks. Then you have a picture of my "strength" ;-)
Ball physics.
The best thing about the game is the great ball-physics. I played some other snooker-games, like WSC-Real 09 and before that Jimmy White Snooker. None of those have such great ball physics as VP4 has. The game reacts very sensitive on how you steer the ball.
For instance, in VP3 I was never able to do the standard break-off like in a real life-game. You needed another type of effect than in the real game was needed. In VP4 that looks much better.
The balls move very smoothly and the behavior of the balls after collision is perfect. That is a big difference with WSC 09 where the white looses way too much pace after contact.
In fact, there is not much to complain about the technical part; It's just perfect.
Pockets
Pockets! Yes we talked more about it. I think most people agree that they are too tight. Even tighter than real championship tables.
There is nothing more to say about it really. Steve would look into it, if I remember it correctly.
AI.
The part where the game can improve is the AI. When you play against a computer-opponent you never know what happens next.
In one situation it misses the easiest shots and the next moment it pot balls which would be for humans almost impossible: Normally a very low pecentage of succeeding.
I would describe the AI as erratic.
There is one type of shot where the AI scores very high and that is when the object-ball and the white are very close to each other.
I have a theory about the way the AI is programmed and that would explain why the AI scores so high with this shot:
Maybe I am wrong, but I guess there is the ideal spot to hit and if the AI should miss, it randomly hits the ball off this spot. For long distance pots a small deviation of the ideal spot is enough to miss. When the balls are very close to each other a small deviation is not enough to miss.
In short: I would love to see the AI plays more "human-like" but I understand this is hard to programm.
Overall I love the game and it is very addicted. I can't wait to meet others online with VP4
