Billiards is one of those genres that never really gets updated. Sure, as time passes and technology improves, the balls get rounder and rounder, and the physics get a little more accurate. But other than including a few more variants and making up new ways to include a trick shot mode, the genre hasn't really jumped forward since the days of the NES. Of course, neither has the actual sport of billiards, so you can't exactly fault the genre for for doing a good job duplicating games like 8- and 9-ball for the past decade.
Q-Ball Billiards Master lets you play 8-ball, straight pool, 9-ball, and rotation against a friend or several different AI opponents. The AI plays differently depending on which opponent you choose. Some opponents play a very streaky game, while others simply dominate the table from beginning to end.
When you've got the cue stick in your hand, you're given all the standard options you'd expect in a pool sim. You can put a little (or a lot of) English on the ball, change the angle of your stick, switch between an overhead and a behind-the-cue-ball view, and, of course, line up and take shots of varying strengths. Lining up shots and adjusting shot strength can be done with the D-pad or the analog pad, and this game is easily the best at showing off the advantages of having an analog D-pad and analog buttons. You can tap the D-pad for slight movements, or you can mash it down for full-speed rotation. For even finer adjustments, the analog stick comes in handy.
The "new" mode added to the game doesn't try to reinvent the trick shot yet again. Instead, this mode, called frozen game, challenges you to get as close to a ball as possible without pocketing it. In later challenges, you'll have to pocket one ball before getting close to the frozen ball - all in one shot. It gets sickeningly hard, but it doesn't start off in a compelling enough way to get you hooked. There is also a lesson mode, where your supervisor introduces lessons. Then, after a screen full of Japanese text, you're left on a pool table to execute your lesson. There's also a dictionary of pool terms.
Graphically, Q-Ball Billiards Master is a bit of a mixed bag. While the room, the table, and the balls themselves look pretty good, and the front-end menus and intro movie are imbued with more style than you'd expect from a simple pool game, the game is so dependant on straight lines that the jagged edges that have become a bit of a trademark of the early days of PS2 games stick out more so than in any other PS2 game currently on the market. Also, while the sound effects accurately convey the sounds of a pool game, the music is a bit of an annoyance, featuring a repetitive style of lounge-turned-electronica that simply doesn't work in the context of a billiards game.
Q-Ball Billiards Master has some things going for it in the gameplay department, and the graphics are certainly as good as, if not better than, any other console billiards game, even with the jagged edges being as noticeably annoying as they are. If you're a console pool shark, this one is worth picking up, but it doesn't do anything to distinguish itself from other recent billiards efforts.
