So far from what I've played, the visual look absolutly stunning, with nice shiny balls and tables, and the area around with the sounds look and sounds nice, and it's so good i actually feel like im in a high class club playing pool.
Now actually going into gameplay, compared to Pool Nation, it's different in the way you control it where they made the mouse visible now and you control most of the game by clicking-n-holding and draging, I would have prefered PN's controls but in Pure Pool it feels more heavy and precise.
Haven't tried out the multiplayer yet because of server issues, but I would pressume it would be the same normal fun that's had in Pool nation.
The ball phyics in it is an overal improvement from the previous title, aside from hiting the white ball with (as hard/fast as you can) feels a little bit off, i want to say not realistic in way i guess.
But overall it's a nice improvement over the old pool game and would recomened it at the price, with hopefully a few more updates and tweaks to the game, Pure Pool will/is the best pool game out there.

Playing more of the game, i found out that the unrealistic physics the game has is the result of bugged Keyboard and mouse controls, this stoped being an issue as soon as i plugged in a controler.
The only portion of the game is fixed, but it's annoying to get a match going where you will see a list of online players and have to send them a challenge to play with them, but you don't know if they want to play with you or responed, so you would sit there waiting and waiting. I don't know why they would just make a 'find a match' option and would put players together as soon as possible to play together online. Plus the PC controls are clunky.

so as of this moment in time, i would suggest waiting a month or two before getting the game, and let them tweak, fix, and update the game to make it less buggy, more controller optimized, and hopefully add a lobby system.
Or just get the PS4 version and not the PC version if you want it now.

More info here

I've been an avid pool player in real life for over 20 years and after seeing the screen shots and trailer for Pure Pool I was really looking forward to it coming out. I was not disappointed.

Pure Pool will no doubt draw many comparisons with the other pool game on Steam, Pool Nation. I've played a ton of Pool Nation and I think Pool Nation looked cool but was very arcade when you got right down to it. The crazy swerve shots and jumps you could do and were REQUIRED to do for certain challenges were fun but no where near realistic.

Pure Pool is much more grounded in real life. Your view is locked to what you would see if you were aiming a shot on a real table, aside from the aiming lines of course. There is no overhead view or birds-eye view of the table. You can "Stand Up" from your aiming view and walk around the table and move the view about as high as I could go if I was on my tip-toes over the table but that's it. It feels very real and makes aiming a shot much more difficult. Long shots the length of the table take skill just like in real pool.

From what I've played of Pure Pool and I'm loving it so far. My only criticism of the game is that it has clearly been designed with a controller in mind. I would highly recommend this game be played with a 360 pad as the keyboard controls are not awful but slightly sluggish when compared to the responsiveness you get with a pad.

I like that the game has strived for realism though. The way you move around the table as you would in real life and your view being is limited, no overhead view, only being able go as high as you could on your tip-toes to survey the table. It really does feel like real pool.

Like I said, I love it. I'd highly recommend this game. One of the best pool games I've played since the days of Virtual Pool 3. This game is as close to real life pool as I think you will get without buying your own table for the back room.

I'll be basing my experiences so far on 100 or so hours with Virtual Pool 4, & VooFoo's previous pool title, Hustle Kings. Keep in mind that some of my issues might have been addressed by the time you've read this review, but I'll try to keep it as current as possible.

Positives:
Very clean visually. Probably the best looking pool title on the market.
Plenty of table customization. Logos/patterns are easily turned off, and there's several colours of cloth available.
The cloth feels closer to the real thing than any other pool sim I've played. I can actually see/feel the backspin grip into it.
Plenty of content to keep you going, especially at the price point.
Fair £/€/$ conversion rate.

Negatives:
I feel the game lacks a bit of cue power. It would be nice to be able to really nail a ball.
The AI can sometimes take too long with each shot, with a weird faux aiming "effect" that just eats up time.
Inverted controls for adding English to the ball/moving the ball - Not a settings issue.
Sometimes, the game just doesn't seem to want to accept inputs, especially when wanting to add English to the ball.
Mouse & Keyboard controls are pretty poor.
Minor graphical issues.
9 ball rules are incomplete (no push-out, 3 fouls, etc).

Overall, I'd recommend it. It will be a very good game once the few little issues it has are ironed out, but right now, just treat it like an unpolished gem - The core is there, and it's very, very good.

This is a really fun game that oozes quality in every aspect and imo the best pool game that is currently available on Steam. It also has a strong focus on online multiplayer and it's quick and easy to find a game against someone. [EDIT: Online is pretty dead at the moment, so beware of that before buying]

It has FANTASTIC graphics, easily the best out of any pool game I've ever seen. The depth of field effect in particular is excellent and very visually pleasing. There's real time ball reflections and incredibly detailed textures so much so I swear you can almost feel and smell that fresh pool table cloth ahhhh.

The sound is solid with a good meaty smack when the balls hit each other. There's quite a nice jazz soundtrack with a subtle but convincing crowd ambience and along with the great visuals and lack of UI creates a really engaging atmosphere.

Physics seem good. The balls always behave as I would expect them too. They seem to have a solid realistic weight to them and I haven't noticed any weird quirks. I have on occasion made a ball bounce off the table from whacking it with full force which is to be expected and it is good to see it simulated, rather than having the balls arbitrarily stuck to the table. But don't get me wrong there's no weird floaty aracade physics.

The controls may feel odd at first but with practice it feels intuitive. It supports both controller and mouse and keyboard, although many people have expressed that the mouse and keyboard controls are clunky and awkward to use. I personally use the controller in which you hold the right thumbstick down to distance your cue and slam it forward to hit the ball. It feels very satisfying once you nail it and I think this is about the closest a game has captured what it's really like to hold a cue and hit the ball; there's no arbitary power bar here. Be warned that there's no overheard view however, it's strictly first person view which I don't mind personally as it feels closer to playing real pool.

Perhaps it's not as in-depth or as realistic as something like Virtual Pool 4, but it is very fun and my personal favourite pool game yet. It is hands down the most immersive pool game out there. My only real complaint is there's no Snooker, but hopefully that's coming in a future DLC.

Is this a game with the same physics as virtual pool 3d sadly no. The thing about the physics when you drop to the bottom of the ball to have back spin and do a power shot it should spin back hard but never does. It lacks many things that virtual pool 3d got right like the spin shots around opponents balls. Is it fun Yes! The game needs a patch badly the field of view is lacking a lot and thus far I haven't seen a table with the diamonds to help give reference to bank shots that would greatly improve the game. My biggest complaint is Mantis App Crashed. Please attach a debugger. and we're not given anything more than that to work on why this game crashes. And it crashes a lot, specially when you are about to win a match then black screen then crash report. So you lost all of your advancements. Lowering settings helps but doesn't fix. I have an Intel 960 with 24 gigs of ram and Nvidia 650 with 2gigs of ddr5 ram so I more than have a rig that can run this at max settings. Now the good points, It looks really nice all the table options and felts lets you take charge of how you want to view the game. The aim has a nice angle pointer to show you when you have your shot lined up. The music is nice and not distracting. The amount of swing you put into the cue is great. I do recommend the game cause even with its faults it's a pleasure to play.

I've played this quite a lot. It's a good pool game with problems. Mainly unreliable online play, frequent crashes (although not for everyone) and poor mouse controls. I recommend using a controller.
I wrote this review in August. Since then, nothing has changed. It still has many annoying problems. The developers don't provide any info on when things will be fixed or even if they're making any progess. They didn't even seem aware of their own game's problems.

Multiplayer:
Finding a match is currently difficult. There isn't a lobby to speak of. Instead, you challenge another player and wait for them to accept or ignore. There's a Quick Match option but I've never found a game this way. If you get into a game, it might play fine. More likely, you'll experience one of the many possible bugs or server issues. You can't mute mics. There is no in-game chat.

Presentation:
The actual pool is very pretty. The best I've seen. The UI is not. It could be improved a lot.

Audio:
Personally, I don't like the music but some people really do. I turn it off. The pool sounds are fine. No complaints there.

Gameplay:
When it works, it plays great, for the most part. Sometimes you can't see a shot as well as you would like but it's mostly fine.
There's a career mode which is just ok. It's just a bunch of different game types against various AI.
The AI isn't great. It pretends to be human so it can be slow. It also can't do bank shots, doubles or plants. It can get out of almost any snooker and doesn't play tactically at all. It just makes amazing pots but it's very beatable most of the time.
You can play US 8-ball, 9-ball, UK 8-ball and a few others like killer and various potting/speed challenges.

So, it needs work. If it was an early access game, I'd say it's a great alpha, a decent beta. Released too early.
The devs don't say a lot so I'm just hoping they'll get this game up to a decent standard.

Visuals - 10/10 Best looking table top game I have come across to date
Physics - 10/10 More fine tuned and realistic compared to Pool Nation
Audio - 10/10 Ive found out I like smooth jazz more than I ever imagined

As its stands the game has a lot going for, but like most games these days it needs some work. Camera angles are funky at times, running in full screen on 1080p seems to crash the game (for me at least) I had to launch windowed at 720p then alt+enter to get into full screen. A lot of peole are having network issues, as am I. There is customization, as of now it doesnt seem as exstensive as Pool Nation but this game has a lot that game didnt.
So I recomment the game to the fans of great pool games, just letting it be known at this time it has its issues... but so did Pool Nation on its release.

Graphics are gorgeous and the physics seem prety good, but the controls are very sluggish and unintuitive...as a huge fan of the old Virtual Pool Hall games, i was excited to see a new Pool game. But from playing the VPH series (where you move the screen around freely with the mouse instead of having to use different buttons/combinations to manipulate movements), this was much slower going and pretty frustrating at times which obviously takes away from any fun. VPH also had a much smoother machanic on the cue stroke. A shame really, because like i said; the graphics are great to look at and the physics seem pretty good.

In my humble opinion:
5/10

While the game mechanics itself are good, there are way too many negative aspects to this game to actually recommend it. In other reviews you can read all about the great graphics, nice music, good physics. However, most reviewers fail to name the negatives, of which there are plenty. Let me name just a few points which will frustrate you every time you encounter them.

-The menus are extremely wonky. It sometimes takes the game well over 5 seconds to do what you told it to do, which may be as simple as restarting a gamemode you just played. Sometimes the menus don't even work and you just keep pressing Enter without anything happening (this happens a lot when you attempt to enter a multiplayer game, the menu switches between "Quick Match" and the game mode selection screen).

-There is no fullscreen. If you try to play full screen the game crashes on start up. Using Alt + Enter you can get to fullscreen, but only up to 1280x720.

-You can't turn off the sound while ingame. You can turn down the sliders, but there will still be really soft sound in the background. To enable or disable sound you have to restart the game.

This game feels (and probably is) a very, very poor console port. The gameplay is solid and you will probably enjoy it, but the menus and especially the lack of full-screen is extremely frustrating. How they thought this was an acceptable product for sale is beyond me, because there are lots of probably easy to fix issues.

Purchased this game for a friend and myself and aside from the horrible lag we had fun for a day or two. since then we cannot connect to each other and to anyone else for that matter. Pool Nation was on sale to $1.00 recently and my friends and I have not looked back.

I want to say that I LIKE THE GAME but IT ABSOLUTELY NEEDS:

- a better viewing angle to see the pool table better;
- better servers because often it doesn't connect;
- a better menu graphics;
- a graphic optimization for lower pc's (I got a 2.1Mhz processor, but it goes slow also with low settings)
- more typology of game (such as "italian pool")

After that I'll suggest this game to all my friends ;)

I've played a lot of pool games. This one wins them all by virtue of completely believable physics, a fantastic, beautifully designed environment, and a focus on online gameplay. As Foolinjection's review points out, there is no top-down veiw, keeping the gameplay as pure as possible. You can stand up and walk around the table, kneel down to check ball placements, but you must return and line up your shot the same way you would at a real pool table.

Pros -
-VooFoo is extremely well-versed in creating amazing looking, physics-true pool games.
-"Pure Pool" plays like its name. No cheat view to line up and shoot from the table lamp's eye of sight.
-The price for this game is VERY reasonable, even while not on sale!
-Rich focus on online gameplay.
-Achievements, trading cards, controller support! (I play with gamepad and it is very functional and responsive)
-VooFoo DNA is a remarkable way to play against your friends or other challengers from online play, even when you are offline. It learns the play-style of players and is basically an AI version of that player! Revolutionary! EXCELSIOR!

Cons-
-the UI is needing much improvement.
-inverted X axis on placing cue ball. There seems to be no workaround except for turning your brain into a mirror perspective when finding good placement on the table.
-unlike Hustle Kings, no option to play your music library instead of theirs, the cool jazzy soundtrack isn't horrible though, and you can always set the music volume down so you can pipe in your tunes from elsewhere.
-sometimes my connection to network isnt great, this is probably my janky DSL though.
(+EDIT+ seems to be the server. Lots of people complaining- devs need to update optimization)
-the game can prove to be pretty difficult if you are grinding for stars and achievements. Probably not a "con" for everyone, but my wife gets stressed out when I've been cussing for an hour and a half about how all I want to do is pot two balls in the side pockets consecutively!
...and finally...
-you're reading this review, and not playing it! Just get it, already!!

(EDIT)

Alright, after looking through forums on this game, it seems many people are having trouble with it. Either on the program itself working on their machines or on network gameplay. Lots of people having problems with controls and complaining about UI. I do get where they are coming from, but I have hope that VooFoo and the publisher will be releasing optimization updates and patches for improving those situations, and hopefully an improvement to the UI is in the works. Also there is only one venue for playing as of now. I still insist that I'm having fun playing and still would recommend the game.

Pure Pool, really good graphics, it looks really beautiful. the gameplay/controls are really good too, but there is one bad thing in my opinion, i'm not sure if its just me that have been really unlucky with this game, but it seems too me like you cant count on the lvl of the AI. I have tried, being stuck at amature players, a couple of times now and it just keeps taking me out, sometimes I didn't even got a chance to hit a single ball, it just took them all out at once and sometimes you can play against master players and it feels like they never tried playing the game before and they keep missing the holes or shooting the black ball in before cleaning the table, but like I said im no sure if its just me that have been really unlucky with this.

but beside the bad AI, this game is good, fun and cheap, so go buy it :DD

Four out of Five ☆☆☆☆

Pure Pool looks amazing and plays really smooth but it needs a lot of work. Half the time I can't even get into the game. It freezes a lot in the menu screen and I can't connect online or even sign in. With that being said, I know the game was just launched and it's normal to have bugs but be patient, this game has a lot of upside and when you can actually play it it's a lot of fun.

UPDATE: August 16, 2014.

I can't even get into game anymore. More than half of my 2.1 hrs on record is from retarting the game over and over hoping it will work.

excellent pool sim but needs better mp matching, the current mp lets it down hugely.

Nice game to relax a few rounds with friends after a hard workaholic day ! I can just recommended it.

This game looks really good. But there are serious problems.

1. The menu system is lazy and somewhat difficult to use.

2. You cannot create local player profiles with stats etc. It's "ShawnMcCool vs Player 2" no matter who is playing in my home. Very unpleasant.

3. You can't actually get a good look at your bank shots. So, you basically have to guess. This removes an entire aspect of the game of pool and is itself a deal-breaker.

4. There's an awful bug when you're placing the cue ball. If you move the controller left, it moves the ball right on the table. This makes no sense.

So, with a few changes I could appreciate this game, for sure. But, the developer won't make them. Avoid.

I have played an hour of Pure Pool and am loving every second of it. The graphics are beautiful and surprisingly my computer can run it well on medium. There are currently alot of issues as stated with many reviews such as matchmaking where I have faced off against the same person 4 times in a row (After I back out and search again) and some are saying it is CPU but I don't know. The gameplay is very nice and smooth with very precise mouse controls. If the CPU thing with matchmaking is true and you want to play against other people then I would recommend holding off for a bit but if you don't mind that then there is also career mode which is essentially tournaments although I haven't checked them out yet. There are also a lack of customisation but that doesn't matter to me but if it does to you then you may wanna hold off aswell.

If you just wanna play a game of pool online or offline and don't care about customisation then this game is perfect for you right now. 7.5/10.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMsMn-UxXt0

What a cool game so much better than messing with FB which was my only outlet before. But now having bought this and going thru the learning curve I must say it is brilliantly designed.

Once you get to grip`s with control`s it`s brilliant. Well worth trying. After all we all love a game of pool, any you guy`s want to try beat me ;) whoopwhoop :) bring it on !!!!!