Real World Golf

The Good
I got the Windows version of the game complete with the Gametrak system for a very £2.50 which pleased me greatly. That aside I was very surprised that it installed and played smoothly under Windows 7, the Gametrak system just snapped together, Windows recognised it and the the game just worked a treat.

The game looked good but initially played in a smallish square with big black borders, once I'd tweaked the game's resolution to match my monitor the borders went and the game looked pretty good.

There is in-game sound and music, birds and planes fly overhead, trees wave in the breeze, all the things you'd expect from a game of this sort. Other golfing games do have greater sophistication, named players, real courses, customisable players etc but for me that does not matter. For me the best thing with this game is that it was fun. Some games you can appreciate the design, some the artwork, some the music or story-line and so on. This game's OK in all those departments but it was a completely new gaming experience for me and I liked it. I found I was really trying to hit a ball into a hole whereas in other golfing games I try to compute angles or hit a key when the power bar is at just the right point. There is no comparison, waving a silly little club thing is more enjoyable - even if it does mean standing up.

The Bad
Nothing to dislike, just a few minor quibbles. The first is more a personal preference, I do find the side scrolling cyclic menus used in this game a bit of a pain. I know they are common in console games but I mainly play PC games and I like to use a mouse which sort of leads on to the next quibble. The box states that this is an easy game to play with "no more confusing joysticks or buttons". I can't remember being confused by a joystick and buttons are so much a part of gaming that they can't really be considered confusing either. What was confusing was moving my arms way out left/right to scroll the menus and pressing a foot pedal to make a selection. Bottom line - in my opinion the Gametrak system works well in a game but takes some getting used to when navigating a menu.

The box talks about commentary from golfer Peter Alliss, can't say I heard any of this and he's not included in the game credits. Also the moby description talks of ten courses and I could only see five on the initial menu, that may mean five are really well hidden or the PC game has fewer courses than the PS2 or XBox versions.

The Bottom Line
I liked this game because it was different and it was fun. It may not be the best golfing game out there but I spent the entire afternoon standing trying to play a round of golf and muttering when the ball swerved off to the right, (always the right - why?) and into the rough

I enjoyed it and it's one of the few games that's advertised as being a fun multiplayer game that may actually live up to its billing.