{"id":18174,"date":"2018-08-13T00:01:32","date_gmt":"2018-08-13T00:01:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=18174"},"modified":"2018-07-30T02:00:17","modified_gmt":"2018-07-30T02:00:17","slug":"pool-panic-switch-pc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2018\/08\/13\/pool-panic-switch-pc\/","title":{"rendered":"Pool Panic (Switch, PC)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>In my freshman year at college, none of my friends had a car on campus yet, so we hung around the dorms a lot that first year.\u00a0 In the lobby basement were a couple of pool tables, so when we got bored we\u2019d sometimes go down there and play pool.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t very good at it.\u00a0 The only other times I played pool were in video game form, either as a mini-game in Super Monkey Ball, or once when I rented Lunar Pool on the NES (which was a pretty wacky pool game).\u00a0 But now I\u2019ve played the wackiest billiards game of all: Pool Panic.\u00a0 It\u2019s available to download on Switch and PC, but reviewed on Switch here.<\/p>\n

In Pool Panic, all the balls are alive.\u00a0 You control the cue ball and can make it walk around freely.\u00a0 Like pool, your job is to knock all the balls in the holes, and leave the 8-ball last.\u00a0 When that\u2019s done, you just knock the 8-ball in the hole and walk yourself in as well.\u00a0 Then you can finish the level.\u00a0 To hit the other balls, you must aim the cue stick with the R analog pad.\u00a0 You can still walk around freely while doing this.\u00a0 When you are ready to make a shot, just hit the R button for a soft hit and the R trigger button below for a harder hit.<\/p>\n

You start on a fairly standard pool table but soon open up a world map with crazy areas like a campsite, car crash, city, and much more.\u00a0 You\u2019ll have to navigate through wild obstacles on each table, and since the balls are alive, they have different personalities too.\u00a0 Red balls will let you knock them around, but some other colored balls get scared and run away when you aim at them, so you have to figure out other ways to get them in the holes.\u00a0 Other balls are sneaky and will dodge you at the last second, and some pick you up and throw you around!\u00a0 It\u2019s very unpredictable!\u00a0 Sometimes you may have to do way different things to put the balls in holes, like herd them around like sheep!<\/p>\n

You can get four trophies on each table.\u00a0 One for finishing it quickly, one for getting all the balls in the holes, one for completing the level in a certain number of hits, and one for not getting the cue ball or the 8-ball in the holes before the other balls.\u00a0 Getting more trophies unlocks more levels.\u00a0 You can also unlock more modes like a harder Panic Mode and multiplayer areas as well.\u00a0 But the game does have a few problems.\u00a0 You can\u2019t adjust the camera angle, so if a ball gets hit behind a bus, for instance, you might not know it\u2019s back there and won\u2019t get the trophy for it if you miss it.\u00a0 The unpredictability of the personified balls can get annoying sometimes, and while the game has a tutorial, much of the game is rather vague.\u00a0 Like how do you get balls down that are stuck in trees, for instance.\u00a0 But the game does have a lot of personality, so if you like crazy off the wall pool, you may want to check this one out.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Kid Factor:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pool Panic is rated E-10 with ESRB descriptors of Crude Humor and Fantasy Violence.\u00a0 Balls burp and scream and make other rude noises, and you can hit balls around and some sound as if they don\u2019t like it very much.\u00a0 Balls can also be in car wrecks and other cartoony predicaments.\u00a0 Reading skill is helpful for the text, and younger gamers may get frustrated at the difficulty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my freshman year at college, none of my friends had a car on campus yet, so we hung around the dorms a lot that first year.\u00a0 In the lobby basement were a couple of pool tables, so when we got bored we\u2019d sometimes go down there and play pool.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t very good at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":18167,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18174"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18176,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18174\/revisions\/18176"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}