In Pocket Pool, a PSP title from Eidos and developer Hyper-Devbox, players take on opponents in various games of pool in order to unlock racy pictures and videos. Sure, there are a lot of ways to customize the experience: many rooms, tables, balls and cues can be unlocked, but it doesn’t affect anything with the gameplay. This is sad, because there was some room for improvement.

The A.I. starts out grossly incompetent, but skips all reasonable skill levels and goes straight to nearly-invincible. Players are given the choice of different camera angles, but in all but one the cue position and angle makes it difficult to hit anything, and the last is an overhead view that makes aiming the simple task of lining up a circle.

The obvious focus of this game was the inclusion of pictures and videos of scantily-clad models. While this certainly fits the PSP’s demographic of young men, it still doesn’t make it enough to sell a game. The number of images and clips isn’t overwhelming, nor is the quality. It’s sad that this game exists, really. Eidos obviously thought there were people out there so desperate for this content that they’d pay for and play through a bad billiards title, and even if there were, those sad souls have most likely discovered the Internet.

Pocket Pool, as a product, makes no sense. It aims for pool fans, but ones that don’t care about accurate physics or taking the game seriously. It appeals to sad, perverted teenagers, but only those with extra cash and no access to the Internet. Finally, the title was for those who want an entertaining game, yet don’t mind bad controls and cameras. Who fits into all these categories?