Sports Bar VR

Doesn't launch. If you're still selling it, it needs to work.

A really nice concept but do not be deceived by the positive reviews, the game is 7 years old and was made for the Vive and Rift cv1 controllers. I found it near impossible to play the game with my Pico controllers, movement especially was awful and I had to refund in the end. I also couldn't find any rooms, the game looks pretty dead now.

This is the first VR game that has ever been so engrossing that I have lost myself to the illusion. Like, I leterally tried to lean on a table that didn't exist in reality so that I could make a shot, and then promptly fell through said imaginary table and onto the floor. Great game!


[table]
[tr]
[td]Gameplay[/td]
[td]■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ . . .[/td]
[td]7/10[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Graphics[/td]
[td]■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ . .[/td]
[td]8/10[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Atmosphere[/td]
[td]■ ■ ■ ■ . . . . . .[/td]
[td]4/10[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Game depth[/td]
[td]■ ■ ■ ■ ■ . . . . .[/td]
[td]5/10[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Game length [/td]
[td]■ ■ ■ ■ . . . . . .[/td]
[td]4/10[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]

VR specific:
[table]
[tr]
[td]Immersion[/td]
[td]■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ . . .[/td]
[td]7/10[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Physical activity[/td]
[td]■ ■ ■ . . . . . . .[/td]
[td]3/10[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Motion sickness risk[/td]
[td]■ . . . . . . . . .[/td]
[td]1/10[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]

+ Nice graphics
+ Multiplayer - play with your friends! However, online physics is sometimes strange because it is processed locally (for example each player see different result from a single dice throw)
+ Many options - physics, difficulty, graphics, sounds... you can adjust everything for the best experience
+ Many games - pool is the main game here (only game with AI you can play with), but you can also play air hockey, darts, chess, ...
+ Customization - you can unlock hats, pool cues, table textures and other items (unlocking is quite slow though), and you can play custom music in the bar

- Own aim settings in online match - I would expect online games to be set either with aim assist or without it. There is even setting for ghost ball at the start, but each player still can set this up individually and have huge dis/advantage.
- Disorienting teleportation - when teleporting around pool table or darts, it always adjust your rotation to direction you are looking which may be more disorienting than useful

Movement: Teleportation
Controls: Motion controllers

My progress: 10 hours
Recommended price: 10-15 €

My overall recommendation score: 80%


More reviews of VR games here! (NachtomVR - Steam curator)

I've been looking for a VR game that I wouldn't get bored of or finish. I firgured give this a shot since I love pool. OMG the realism in playing pool alone is worth it. The physics are as real as the get minus having a table to lean on. Air hockey is geat as well. What would make this game more real is to have 2 modes. One is "Freeplay" and the other is "Money" mode. You come in with $50 VR dollars and play games to win more or lose it all. Use the money at the bar or bet on games you play for more. Even have a fake ATM inside to deposit your winnings and use later. Also, please add a "Claw Machine" for fun prizes. Overall one of the most useful fun VR games that VR was meant for and worth it. A door to the bowling alley is a must for a future feature.

SportsBar VR is a great experince and really fun. My friends and I love playing and just hanging out together. I would reccomend this game to any one who wants to have fun and relax in VR or wants a great bar sports game. The game is a little laggy but it doesnt affect game play that much. but there are some features I think would make the game even better and more fun to play.

-Add the ability to change the tvs in the bar so my friends and I could watch sports games while playing pool or something like that

-make the games like chess have a more competitive feel by not allowing the other player to move your pecies

-suggestions on other games you could add are ping pong, bear pong, 12 pin bowling, cards, blackjack, roulette, poker, bean bag toss, or horse shoes

-add more items and make a currency system to get thoughs items while you can still unlock some items from leveling up

Thoughs are all my suggestions if the developers dont read the reviews can anyone tell me the way I could tell this to them I would really appreciate that.

This game is awesome!!! I love coming from working cracking a beer and playing this to wind down. There are only 2 things I would love to see this game add. The first is the option to play my own videos on the tvs in the game and the second is it would be sweet to walk into this room with like 20 people in it and be able to challenge whoever is in the room. Great game, a must buy, and well worth the money.

Asked the wife about putting a pool table upstairs; she laughed and said no.
So I bought a GTX 980, Vive, and Pool Nation VR.

$1600 dollars later and I get the last laugh.

Definitely one of the most AMAZING experiences EVER! I couldn't believe it!
My opponent: Hey whats up man!? lets play!
me: I wonder if thats just the game talking to me or if its an actual person speaking to me, and if so I wonder if they can hear me
my opponent: Yeah I can hear you!
me: really...???
my opponent: Yup! (while he waves at me) theres a microphone located on the htc vive headset on the front bottom
me: TOTALLY BLOWN AWAY!!
Great experience!

I've spent hundreds of dollars over the past couple of weeks buying content for my Vive... this is the killer app. I'm not even a huge pool fan, but this honestly felt like I was at a cool bar hanging out with some friends. For someone with kids thiat can't always get out for this kind of fun, this is absolutely amazing. This is the first time I've honestly forgotten where I was for a few minute; well done devs... the sense of presence is really unmatched.

Amazing game the VR multiplayer is stunning with seeing each others headset and controllers and being able to talk you might as well be in the same room very surreal in a good way.. The VR interactive bar with tables, darts, dominos etc is very very immersive. Multiplayer is essentially inviting someone into your house and with the current vr pricetag pricing out the trolls its a great MP experience to boot, normally with game industry people or high end enthusiasts interested in just have a good bit of bar talk and a good game of pool.

Was up till 4am playing MP with some USA guys last night, still stunned by the experience this morning awesome and I see its looking to be imporved by the devs too!

Dont forget to play with the giant dominos too, free the inner child and go wild!

Played a gamewith a random, i lost.
Spent 2 hours running around the bar having swordfight with pool cues, buildt a tower out of dominoes, had a Dart war, stacked chairs to build a fort.
He then disconnected to never be seen again.

The only Con was the emotional trauma of losing a friend

10/10

I'm enjoying this game so far. Two suggestions. 1. Full screen spectator mode for those of use making video/streaming. 2. Doubles. Would like to be able to play doubles and/or just have more people in the room to chat with.

Check out some game play: https://youtu.be/T3VXpqanE0A

This is easily one of the most immersive and 'full' feeling VR games out there right now. The bar is gorgous and has a great atmosphere and the devs took full advantage of UE4's powerful lighting tools.

Interaction with the game is simple, fun, and predictable. The physics of the pool balls and how they move around the table/react to the cue are spot on. It's almost frightening. There's a ton of other stuff in the bar to grab and toss and interact with. You can even play darts and it'll track your score for you, which is pretty cool.

This is my first VR title with mutliplayer and the feeling of being next to another human (who may be on the other side of the world for all you know) and being able to hear their voice come out of their 'face' and see their gestures and mannerisms, and understand when they're shrugging or leaning on something or holding their hands on their hips when it's just represented by a set of floating goggles and controllers is an unreal feeling. My first multiplayer match was with someone I didn't share a language with, and we just spent 20 minutes throwing bottles and chairs at each other and fooling around and giggling like children.

That alone was worth the cost of admission.

Plus, the devs are active in the community, seem like good guys (or gals) and are working towards improving performance and adding content.

You can't lose with this purchase.

Now THIS is what I got the Vive for. As an older gamer (41) this is by far one of the most incredible online experiences I've ever had in gaming. More games like this will start making dust collect on my Oculus Rift. Absolutely stunning.

I am speechless! I expected this game to be good, but it blew my expectations out of the water! This could very well be the Vive's main attraction! I could see myself playing this for hours, and hours on end. The social interaction is just so wonderful! The ability to actually see the other players hands and head really adds a new level of immersion to this game!
I have already made two friends by just joining a random session, talking with them, and shooting some pool! The details in this game (or should I say "accurate simulation"), are so polished and beautifully created, you easily get immersed in a whole new world...or bar I should say. The physics are 100% accurate, and it is not noticably different from real life. This is greater then real life pool, this is...Pool Nation VR! Even if you have no interest in pool, or you have never even played, you will LOVE this game! Its worth it to learn!

An easy recommendation. It's exactly what VR pool ought to be.

Things I like:
- Arcade-like assists like ghost ball that are completely optional.
- Multiple game modes
- Locking the cue in place mechanics
- Teleport, snap-to-table-edge teleport, AND wand-based positioning
- Efforts to support a physical table in the play area (though completely optional)

Things I'd like to see changed or improved:
- Scale feels a little bit small to me. NPCs are all about 5'2".
- Ability to turn off NPCs and misc. throwable objects to save performance.
- More environment choices (with less ray-inducing neon), including a VERY basic environment for performance.

Others may disagree, but while the environment looks very nice and is lively (nice job!), my personal preference is the quality and performance of the table and game of pool. I can run medium settings on my GTX 780 with reprojection, but I'd gladly turn everything else off if I could run high settings on the table itself.

So... I have a pool table in my family room now. This is absolute VIRTUAL REALITY. You\'re in a bar, you can manipulate most things, the atmosphere is great, and the game itself actually has a game IN it :O what a concept!

- There are a number of AI opponents that range in difficulty
- Winning spawns presents that give you unlockables... it is the MOST satisfying thing
- The controls, to me, are some of the best implemented in a game for world manipulation, the grip controls are the greatest thing in this game!
- Using the cue and the aiming system is great, however I wish there was a height adjustment. Being a little taller(6\'1) I find I have to almost squat to line a shot up. But man...it\'s too cool when you sink something you meant to
- I have yet to try multiplayer, but I\'d rather play AI. But playing with a friend would be awesome.
- There\'s darts in the game. Not the easiest to play but still very satisfying when you hit the board haha

I hope they continue to update this game with some features that would make it pretty damn awesome:

- Control the music with your own music library, including shared tunes across streams
- Varied environments and perhaps even a few story modes where you play in front of crowds and have rival VR bots
- Branch out to Snooker and trick shots

Either way, you like pool? This is pool.

This made my day :)

Awesome. Awesome.

Firstly, the pool game itself is very good. It’s intuitive and slick, and the whole environment looks great. You can also play darts, but I found this to be fairly tricky. I’m sure it could be mastered with a bit of practice though.

But that’s not where the appeal of this game really lies. It’s an insight into just how social strapping a brick to your head, in a dark room, on your own can actually be. Until now, fun as it may be, VR has been a pretty lonely experience in most games, but Pool Nation VR changes that.

The multiplayer mode is hilarious. Even though your opponent only appears as goggles and controllers-for-hands, their realistic movements really do give you the sense that you’re actually in the room with someone. Once you have a buddy to share the space with, the pool almost becomes secondary because there are so many other amusing ways to entertain yourselves. Virtually everything in the room can be interacted with, and the physics are pretty spot on.

Bearing in mind that it’s this much fun with total strangers, I can’t wait until VR is more commonplace and my mates and I can have virtual get-togethers, presumably on a more regular basis than is feasible to arrange in real life. I’m thinking poker games etc.

In the games I played against numerous opponents, neither of us spoke much. I put this down to the poor quality of the microphone in the Vive, and the fact that it was late at night and the rest of my family were fast asleep. Instead, all you can hear (aside from the background pub noise and the music) is the pair of you rapidly descending into uncontrollable fits of childish giggles. I could actually see them physically bent over double, as was I! Almost every time I played a shot, I’d look up and see the other guy doing something comical, and vice-versa. I was crying with laughter for most of the time, more so than I’ve done in ages. We tended to use gestures to show, for example, frustration at missing a shot or an outrageous fluke, rather than saying things out loud.

It was all the more entertaining because this was on the day of release, so you could see that everyone was still figuring it out and were awestruck by the novelty of it all.

Technically this game excels too. The textures look great, and it’s the only game I’ve seen that manages to make the resolution of the screens look several times greater than they actually are and as they appears in other titles.

My only complaints thus far are:

• I’d like to be able to adjust the position of my grip hand on the butt of the cue. The reason being is because, by default, it’s quite far forwards and I can see no way of changing it. This means you’re hitting your body with the controller as you stroke the cue back and forth. In real life my hand would be further behind me.
• Sidespin doesn’t seem to take any affect when the ball bounces off a cushion, and I can’t appear to get the ball to swerve. Maybe I just need more practice.
- The background sounds are on a loop of a few minutes, and every so often you hear some bloke banging on about 'Tuesday night, Tuesday night'. If it weren't for him you probably wouldn't notice it looping. It just breaks the immersion slightly.

Some suggestions and wishes:

• Multiple players (as in more than two), and/or spectators. It would just add to the atmosphere and hilarity. You’d probably need to be able to set up an exclusion zone around your table though to stop dickheads trying to ruin your games. Either that or a vote-to-kick or some sort of block system.
• Access to your own music library. It would be cool if it could be displayed and selected using the jukebox in the room. I could create a playlist and then anyone could choose songs from it to queue up.
• I’m sure there’s a technical term for this, but it makes things so much more realistic when objects resist each other. E.g. at Present, I can grab a bottle and wave it through other objects. In Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades, for example, the physics are just a little better in this way.
• Following on from the point above, I shouldn’t be able to play a shot where my cue is intersecting another object – a ball in front or the cushion of the table etc.
• When positioning your head within a solid object, such as a wall or the pool table, the sound and vision should go blurry, like in Call of the Starseed.
• Be able to write messages – maybe on a board so you can hold it up to the intended recipient (assuming more participants are allowed in later releases). Could either type text or scrawl it with chalk or the like. Maybe have a set of predefined sentences and/or be able to define your own (‘good shot’, ‘you fluky twat’ etc.). This goes back to what I was saying earlier about not being able to talk if the rest of your household are asleep or whatever.
• Beer to flow from the bottles and bar taps.
- Mirrors on the wall so you can see yourself also.
• Change the TV channels, or even play music videos from your library.
• More environments.
• Be able to create and share new environments, tables, people, cues etc.
• Be able to create, style and position bystander avatars.
• Be able to control lighting levels etc.
• Be able to control ambient noise and music levels.
• Have a full head visible instead of just the VR goggles and hats. Could even have facial expressions to select from. Could be amusing.
• Hands visible in the game instead of controllers? You could then have hand gestures like in Hover Junkers.
• Miscues if you hit the ball at an acute angle and/or haven’t chalked your cue (need to be able to chalk the cue!).
• More game types/rules. English pub rules. Red and yellow. Two shots upon fouling etc. Display the rules somewhere.
• Snooker option.
• Replays. Slow-motion etc.
• Pocket tightness adjustment.
• Table speed adjustment.
• The potted balls to show up in the clear slot on the side of the table like in real life.
• Room scale and height adjuster.
• Adjust the scale of the people in the room. Everyone seems a bit small, which is fine for the girls, but the guys look a tad out of proportion.
• The bystanders to walk around instead of just dancing and chatting on the spot.

Until now, Audioshield was my favourite (followed by Project Cars), but Pool Nation VR now easily takes that crown by a loooong way.

I already had high hopes/expectations for the future potential of VR hardware and apps, but this definitely raises the bar and whets the appetite further. Lest we forget we’re only a few months into this whole VR adventure (proper), and if we’re already achieving this then it bodes extremely well.

Props to the devs.

This is the future!

Awesome.

So much awesome. Great physics, graphics and fun. And cheap! Just go ahead and buy it. The pool feels extremely close to the real thing. The only thing you need to remember is that YOU CAN'T LEAN ON THE TABLE.

First off, this is a great pool game. Physics as well as hit detection is just perfect.

I only have about 40 mins to 1 hour invested so far but that time passed by in what felt like a split second.

So far I've only fooled around a bit in the environment and played the AI a couple of times.

It's probably just me (sucks at pool) but the AI has bested me every time, and since it's the easiest difficulty it should be a little easier.
Don't get me wrong, I like a challenge, but since there's about 10-15 difficulty settings the easiest one should be a cakewalk. That way it would be both a casual game that caters everyone, but they seem to be aiming for the hardcore pool enthusiasts.

Pros:
Great physics
Awesome graphics
Truly immersive
Priceworthy

Cons:
AI a little too good (like I mentioned, probably just me)
Dart physics are a bit off at the moment
For some objects the SFX sometimes doesn't play

Conclusion
A hell of a game that's more or less free.
There are some minor caveats, but they're all patchable.

Improvements
Please oh please add multiplayer hubs for about 15-20 players so you can just hang out by the sofas and chat, walk around and spectate tables etc. That would be EPIC!