My 26 year old daughter is all about The Sims and has been since the first Sims game appeared back in 2000. She has bought every release and expansion pack available. She has told me on more than one occasion that she would literally sell a kidney to get first dibs on a new Sims release.

So, you can imagine her frustration when I told her that I had Sims Pool on my (3rd gen) iPod nano. She still uses the pink iPod mini I gave her for Christmas many years ago and refuses to let me get her an updated model.

"There no reason the spend money on another iPod when this one works fine," she tells me." Now I think she has a reason.

I’ve been playing Sims Pool on my nano whenever I get a free minute or two for several weeks now and I have to say that I am a fan. Unlike my daughter, I don’t care much for The Sims games. I think they are fascinating, but that’s about as far as my interest goes.

Sims Pool does not required me to play with The Sims portion of the game in order to get to the action, and that’s just fine with me. EA Mobile limits the amount of Sims interaction, making it an option rather than the main theme of the game, which is (you guessed it) pool.

I’ve played a few pool simulations on small platforms (like cellphones and PDAs) and I can tell you that they have not been the best pool games around. Ball physics are hard to run on tiny CPUs and the graphics capabilities of many earlier devices just couldn’t rendering anything realistic looking enough to make play fun.

Sims Pool for the iPod fixes most of the problems of earlier pool efforts, and while it won’t make your believe you’ve got a pool cue in one hand and a beer in the other, for a tiny screen the game plays exceptionally well.

The overhead view of the table is logical if a bit unexciting, and the cue controls via the iPod’s scroll wheel are intuitive. Ball dynamics are believable and everything is rendered well.

You have the option to play the Sims version, choose to Quick-Play where you can play against one of several Sims opponents, or choose to Pass-n-Play, an option that lets other people play.

I can beat the Sims players pretty easily, so the Pass-n-Play option is a good one. You can also save a game so you can finish it later, and just as with any well behaved iPod game, Sims Pool features a standard list of options for adjusting the game’s environment.

Cue control is a snap! Well, a scroll.

If you decide to play the Sims version you can accumulate money to upgrade your Sim’s equipment and decorate his or her home. This is all fairly pointless to me since there isn’t a huge variety of things to pick from, and when your Sim is at home it really doesn’t do a whole lot, so you wind up at the pool hall most of the time anyway.

I should mention that the goal of the Sims version is to get enough stuff to throw a party. I suppose that when that happens other Sims characters come over to your Sims house and hang out.

Um...OK. That’s cool, I guess.

Not much to do at your Sims home. May as well play pool.

It would be nice if there was some way to actually build a Sims character that you can keep and use in any of the iPod Sims games, so the money and stuff my Sims got in Sims Bowling, for instance, would be there when I use him in Sims Pool.

I don’t expect to be able to create a generation of pool hall hustlers, though such an option would almost make me want to bother with the Sims part. Almost, but not quite. It would, however, have my daughter all over it like a cop on a donut.

The Bottom Line is this: As it is, Sims Pool is a lot of fun and I think it’ll be a game you’ll come back to play whenever you have a spare minute or two. The Sims portion of the game is weak, but luckily the Quick-Play makes it so you never have to bother with the Sims side of the house. If the Sims part was more playable I’d highly recommend this game. Even though that part is only OK I still feel very comfortable in recommending Sims Pool.

* Note: My rating system goes like this:

* Get it Now! - Highest rating and an absolute must-have
* Highly recommend - Minor flaws, but a great product
* Recommend - Flawed, but still a solid product
* So-so - Problem product that may find a niche market
* Avoid - Why did they bother making it? A money waster.

Vern Seward is a writer who currently lives in Orlando, FL. He’s been a Mac fan since Atari Computers folded, but has worked with computers of nearly every type for 20 years.