Undoubtedly one of the best free games available on the Internet, and also one of the most addictive.
After scratching the surface, you'll realise the game has an awful lot going for it, but unfortunately most people won't ever sink their claws in. Firstly, it's a golf game, and people associate golf with being dull. Secondly, it's in a cutesy Korean animated style where the characters are excessively cartoon-like. Again, this is enough to put some westerners off immediately.
If you're still reading, you're a huge golf fan, a fan of Korean cuteness, or someone who is willing to give this game a chance. After all, it is free. The two final hurdles to overcome before you can begin playing are the registration and the client download. Some people do not like to provide their details on the Internet, but this game will be asking you for them, since you create an account in order to keep track of your characters' advancement. The client itself weighs in at around 300MB and that will take quite a while on basic broadband. Dial-up users will be tearing their hair out. Thankfully high-speed broadband is common enough that your download isn't likely to take forever.
The tutorial system in the game is comprehensive in terms of gameplay - you will find most aspects explained in a clear and friendly way - but it does fall short of explaining all the terminology, which you might have to brush up on in your own time. It's incredibly easy to make a shot: aim with the arrow keys and press the space bar when the on-screen power bar gets to the right places.
A good selection of game modes are available to choose from, including Stroke play (individual scores), Match play (team scores), and Tournament play. Although Stroke and Match play only allow a maximum of four players per game, you really wouldn't want any more than this, because you each take your shots in turn and you are made to watch the other players. Thankfully there is a timer, so they can't leave you hanging while they go off and get a cup of coffee. Whilst this might be off-putting for some, it's actually very good to watch the way others play the game because it's possible to pick up new lines and strategies on holes that you thought you had already mastered.
Tournament mode is a little more frenzied and involves up to thirty players. Everyone plays at once, and you take your shots one after the other at the same time as the other players. There is an overall time limit inside which you must complete the course, so it often pays to know the course already to avoid procrastinating on trickier shots.
Speaking of courses, there are many to choose from, each with their own, slightly surreal, theme and feel, from the lush paradise of Blue Lagoon to the icy and barren Ice Cannon.
The advancement system is beautifully balanced, if a little on the slow side. From rookie, you will advance through grades F, E, D, C, B and A until reaching beginner rank, where you start from F again. There are many ranks, all the way up to pro, and to reach the very top you would have to invest a serious amount of time - even players who clock dozens of hours a week over the period of a year still haven't reached pro.
As you play, your character will earn Pang, one of two in-game currencies. The amount varies depending on how well you play, with typical rewards being small for achieving par (the hole's 'recommended' score) and very large for a hole in one, or a chip-in from an extreme distance.
Your character has five key abilities, which can be improved upon by purchasing items such as clubs, accessories and clothing. Many of these items can be bought with Pang, but some (usually the better ones) can only be bought with Cookies, the other type of in-game currency. Cookies can be bought with real money, something which will instantly alarm some readers.
This review is not the place to discuss the rights or wrongs of selling in-game currency for real money, but there are two key points to raise. Firstly, no matter which way you look at it, the development cost and the server cost for this game must be paid, and rather than charging a monthly subscription fee or an initial purchase cost, this is an alternative way of achieving it. Secondly, you can progress all the way through the game without spending any money at all. None of the items costing Cookies are required for advancement, and a lot of players do without them.
From a graphical point of view, the game plays beautifully on most systems, even older ones. I had to score the graphics fairly low because they will look a bit dated on the more modern systems, and if you have a beefy graphics setup, don't expect it to break a sweat even on maximum detail. Having said that, the visuals more than serve their purpose, with brightly-coloured, interesting courses and a clear and intuitive interface.
The audio experience, it has to be said, is less promising, although not altogether useless. It should be borne in mind that there aren't all that many possibilities for sound in a golf game, so the ones provided do serve their purpose. My main gripe is the soundtrack, which is cheeky and cheerful to begin with, mildly repetitive after a while, and thoroughly irritating once you've been playing a few days. The option to play without music is there, thankfully.
After you've played a few rounds, earned a bit of Pang and tried out a few of the courses, you'll realise how much is involved in mastering the shots in Albatross 18. Factors such as wind speed, wind direction, surface and slope will all affect your shot in some way, but crucially, they're all quantified so you're not left guessing. This means that it is possible to play very accurate shots in the most difficult conditions, but it's not easy to do so, because every additional factor you need to take into account will compound the shot difficulty.
Putting is like its own minigame, and it's perfectly possible to be lousy at normal shots and awesome at putting, or vice versa. Since the difference between a sure thing and a brutally difficult putt can sometimes be only five yards, getting in as close to the hole as possible is paramount, and there can be some extremely tense moments as you desperately stare at the screen, hoping your opponent misses her twenty-yard putt to give you the win.
Unfortunately, there is a small element of cheating in the game, through the use of shot calculators, which will quickly work out all the factors and give the best possible shot. Thankfully, this kind of behaviour is not common, and those who use it are less than subtle about it, so you can kick them out of your games next time around.
The Korean school of thought on gaming does creep into Albatross 18, but not to a great degree. The first time you right-click on any player, you'll notice the flood of statistics. Everything from the percentage of shots resulting in a PangYa (perfect shot) to the total number of yards the player has hit the ball (ever). One statistic that is missing, and for the better, is win/loss ratio, as this has very little meaning. Although there are official top rankings for each course and various other ranking tables, very little emphasis is placed on achievement, and much more on experience. You will find yourself trying the ridiculous curving shot that will give you an extra 200 Pang so you can afford that new hat instead of worrying about getting onto the green in one stroke.
The other area where Korean gaming enters the fray is with 'special moves' which we're more accustomed to seeing in beat-em-up games, and a range of magical potions and phoenixes (balls). This is definitely not a realistic golf simulation, nor does its lack of realism cause it to be a worse game.
I think the real beauty of this game is that it can be appreciated by all ages, from kids (there is a built-in profanity filter that is remarkably effective) to adults, and from the casual gamer to the die-hard addict. The real tragedy is that in a world of high-octane, polygon-spewing carnage-making first-person shooter games, this kind of thing is so often overlooked. It's totally free too, and whilst Albatross 18 won't miss you if you don't try it out (it has enough of a player base to be self-sustaining now), you will definitely be worse off having never tried it.