The story of The Hustle is basically that of a down and out pool hustler who's trying to find his way back to notoriety. It's something like the movie Rounders, except there's no John Malkovich. There is in fact a card game you can play and gamble in as a kind of mini-game for the rare moments you get tired of pool (as if that's even possible). But the story quickly takes a back seat to the gist of the game, which is to play pool games with menacing people, and take their money.
I was somewhat anticipating a "hustle" element to the game play of The Hustle. I expected it to attempt what The Con did. That game actually has an approach to winning where you can purposely lose to win money if you bet against yourself. In The Hustle, I thought I might have to lose games to get people to bet big money, and then beat them with my fine-tuned skills. Here, you simply make bets and try your best to win -- pretty straightforward. Characters will challenge you to various games of pool for different amounts of money. You basically work your way up the ranks this way, taking the games you want to play, and winning them. Eventually you'll meet actual boss characters. But you've got to have enough cash and respect to take on these sharks. If you beat them you get to move on to other venues.The game play mechanics are simple enough. By taking the easy meter-tapping approach that games like Hot Shots have incorporated for some time now, pulling off a shot in The Hustle isn't hard at all. One option allows you to gauge the power of your shot by dialing it up or down with the D-pad. The strength is indicated by a meter on the left of the screen. Next to that meter is another meter with a little marker sliding up and down. In the middle is a white zone. The idea is to tap the X button the moment that marker slides over the white zone. Accomplishing this determines the accuracy of the shot you're taking. The other option is called Instant Shot, and it allows you to use the analog nub. You pull back on it to determine the power, and move it forward at the instant the marker moves over the white zone. Unfortunately the nub sensitivity is whack, as we learned with many other PSP games. Sticking with the regular shooting mechanic works just fine.
The green bar gauges intuition. As players make shots, the instincts of that character grows. The trickier the shot is, the more intuition is gained. You can then spend this intuition juice on special shooting options like Aftertouch and Dead Eye. Aftertouch allows you to control the spin of the cue ball after you've hit it, and thus control it's path a bit. This hot little feature gives those who want to master the virtual game of pool the tools to do so. You can make some pretty crafty shots this way.
If you're in a tough spot and need a little help, you can call on Dead Eye using your intuition juice. He's a sort of a Mr. Miyagi of pool, except he looks more like Sean Connery. You simply pause the game and select Dead Eye, and this mysterious character will show you how to make complicated shots. You even get an opportunity to practice the shot before you go back to real game. This is simply a cool way of giving beginners in-game tutorials. Plus, it's fun watching Dead Eye make those spectacular shots.
The first issue that stood out here was the load time. Many PSP games have suffered because of this very problem, and The Hustle is no different. For starters, the initial loading screen takes forever. I was at an Italian restaurant waiting on my food to cook, and I kid you not, my pasta was ready before I was able to get into a pool match in the game. Once you're actually in a game, the pains of loading are far from over. When you line-up and take your shot, a cut scene plays of your character going through motions of lining-up the stick and knocking the ball (the same happens for the opponent). Every time you transition between the game play and the cut scene, the game gets stuck and has to load.
And it's not like there's some huge world that has to be loaded in. At least in Midnight Club, there was an entire city that was loaded for you to race around in. And even after that, Rockstar solved their loading issues and proved so with Grand Theft Auto: Liberty Cities. In the Hustle, you're simply knocking balls around a table while animated characters stand around and watch. Yeah, they move around every now and then (sometimes they even get into little fights), but for the most part there's no excuse for the laborious pauses I saw in the game.You can turn-off the character animations so that all you see is the pool stick knocking the balls around, but that robs the user of the great presentation element they picked up the game for in the first place. Even though the animations are a bit clumsy at times (characters walking into another), they do in fact add to the atmosphere of the Hustle. Yes, the game moves faster without them in there, but the user gets a much drier game.
The character animations weren't the only thing I had to turn-off. The music selection is nerve-racking. I'm sure there are people somewhere that will enjoy the chalkboard-clawing sounds of Breed, but I'm not one of them. A little more variety in the choices would have helped. Additionally, the crowd outbursts drove me up the wall. Throughout the game, people in the crowd will yet out things to throw you off like, "Are you holding the stick right?" and my most hated, "CMOOOONNN!" It was a cute idea at first, because anyone who's ever played in a real pool hall knows there's nothing quiet about the environment. The issue with The Hustle is that you're hearing the same phrases screamed over and over again and it just gets obnoxious. It doesn't add anything especially challenging to the game you're playing, except for maybe challenging your resistance to throw your PSP across the room.As far as Wi-Fi support, The Hustle has Ad-hoc, the version that only allows you to play directly with other PSPs. That means you can't play people over the internet, or download any additional data for the game. This is somewhat disappointing because the competitive nature of pool lends itself well to playing online.
Verdict
The Hustle makes a nice attempt at offering us a pool game with flavor. I think pool works well on the PSP, and I was actually happy to see some of the elements that were drawn together here. The character models looked pretty good, and really helped add to the "streety" tone that the game was going for. Unfortunately, technical issues got in the way, and for handheld gaming, load times are critical. Pool itself isn't a lightning-fast game, but it's really no fun staring at a virtual table while cut scenes load. I needed a more fluid game to really get the most out of my pool experience, and I never saw that. The Hustle has plenty of great ingredients to work with, and my hope is that a sequel of some kind might tie them all together nicely.
