Embedded is the shot that changed our life. Well it would of done, if we were playing for real money. As it happens, in Hustle Kings you’re just competing for credits, but damn, when 10,000 of those are on the table (like there were when our Sammy made that shot), you feel the pressure.
Hustle Kings is one of the more complete PSN games in a long time. Based around the always addicting world of billiards, it really does fill a PSN niche. Inferno Pool was good, but this is a ton better. It has a competent single-player mode (tournaments, career, trickshots, snooker, stat-tracking, unlocks, YouTube uploads, custom soundtracks) and even more competent online mode. Hustle Kings is all about, well, hustling. You take your virtual pot of cash into a “room”. Rooms then fill with challengers each bringing their “pot” of money with them. You can challenge any player in the room with a bet, and they are able to then accept, decline or reconsider the bet. Maybe they want to gamble. Maybe they don’t want to gamble. Either way, you’ll eventually jump into a game of whatever pool type the room holder’s declared, and play for credits. The winner takes the bet, the loser cries into his cue. It’s exciting.
Credits can either be further gambled, or spent on new characters, cues, avatars, and ball types. Aside from the bells and whistles, Hustle Kings gets its ball physics spot on, with tons of different shot options including jump, swerve, etc. If you can do it on a real pool table, you can do it here. You even have to chalk your cue every few shots to increase precision.
At £6.29, Hustle Kings is a steal. The adverts and micro-transactions (with real money this time) remind you of that. But, hey, that never really feels too irritating, because, this game is cheap for what you get.
It’s going to be exciting to see how VooFoo and Sony extend this game, because there’s already a rather solid community for it building. There were 3,500 people online earlier, which is tons for a PSN release on available (as far as we’re aware) in Europe.
We’ll have a full Hustle Kings review in the new year, but, we just wanted to let you know in the mean time that if you like pool, well, you should probably be playing this now.
