Golden Tee Advanced Hands-On Impressions

In its arcade incarnation, Golden Tee Golf used a trackball to control stroke power. The mobile phone has no such control mechanism with which to evoke memories of those public-house staples, but it manages to approximate the Golden Tee experience in other ways. Due out later this quarter, Golden Tee Advanced looks graphically similar to its brethren, but it seems to play much like any other mobile golf game.

Like golf itself, Golden Tee Advanced can be played alone or played with friends (by passing your handset around). You can change clubs, choose how hard to hit the ball (via the typical backswing meter), and enable backspin, which prevents the ball, upon landing, from rolling forward. The game can be played entirely with your phone's navigation pad or with the number keys. A helpful introductory tutorial shows you the purpose of each button.

In general, Golden Tee's graphics are colorful and cartoony. Shots are shown from multiple angles, thanks to a picture-in-picture close-up on your ball. The build of the game we received ran smoothly on a Sanyo PM-8200, although load times were fairly long. The game also included sounds for contact with the ball and for the ball's landing. These seemed fairly realistic.

Golden Tee Advanced holds your personal longest drive and longest putt records. On some holes, even if you double-bogie, you may still set a new record, which can be just as rewarding. Putting requires much more skill than chipping or driving, although a similar timing-based system is used.

Golden Tee Advanced is shaping up to be a solid game of golf. Check out our full review when this game goes "gold," later this quarter.