Can you sink the pink? Down the brown? Sack the black? Or think of any better snooker-related puns to begin a review with? Hopefully ones that don't make you sound like Anne Robinson doing a Weakest Link 'Pot Black' special. Send your answers stitched into the back of a smart black waistcoat, please...

But whether snooker or pool - either 8-ball or 9-ball - or indeed billiards, or bar billiards is your poison, then there's plenty in the way of deadly draughts to quaff here. All these games are simulated for one-off play and you can tackle a full championship season of snooker or pool, as well as custom hybrid tournaments.

The championship mode is the centrepiece here, and it lets you cross cues with top-ranked players from real life such as O'Sullivan and Hendry. The idea is you progress up the world rankings by winning tournaments, with each victory allowing you to spend points to boost your stats in an RPG style. For example, the better your "potting" and "pressure" skills, the less likely you are to waver on that crucial tourney-winning black.

Of course, you'll struggle to pot anything if the control system is cack, but fortunately that's not the case. You aim by referencing two lines, one of which shows where the object ball will go, the other illustrating where the cue ball will travel. The target line is generally fairly short, meaning that close pots are much simpler to make, as you can easily see whether you're in line, but longer pots are more difficult (which is just as it should be).

Potting is only half the battle, though, as positioning is paramount (especially in snooker), and Sega has included a positional indicator to help you judge how much spin and power to use. This is a very useful addition which aids the player in putting together some seriously smooth breaks, although its accuracy is limited and it doesn't predict factors such as cannoning into other balls. However, if it did everything for you, the difficulty level of the game would be trivialised.

The only weak point of the control system is that the various positional and target indicators can get in the way of your aiming lines, making them difficult to see on occasion. However, all the aiming and positional help can be turned off, so the real virtual pros out there won't be bothered by this.

They will, however, be bothered by Snooker 2007's below-par presentation. The menu system is confusing and clunky and the graphics can be best described as serviceable: the look of the players and their animation is distinctly last-gen. And although we're pretty used to this in sport sims by now, the commentary is bobbins, being rather repetitive and quite often out of context.

Still, when you're building a sweet century break and screwing the cue ball back with precision positioning thanks to the game's slick controls, none of that really matters. The core gameplay is very enjoyable and when you're fed up with playing the computer, you can take to the online tables of Xbox Live and challenge a fellow virtual potter.

Despite the rather rough edges of the presentation, there's a good quality simulation of snooker (and pool, and billiards) here. Being able to use the positional aids to play snooker like a true professional makes for some of the choicest cue-related fun we've had in a long while.