Sure, you can play golf, but can you play golf standing on one leg while rubbing your head? Can you, big shot? Well, Psygnosis and Intelligent Games (no hubris in that name) want you to try. Their contribution to an already overstuffed field of golf sims offers just one new twist in the midst of blinding mediocrity. And that twist doesn't even work too well.
The intent was to create another swing interface to provide finer control over the swing. Pro 18 offers the now-standard three-click and mouse swing controls, but it also adds a four-click interface. It works much like a three-click swing, but with... an extra click. You click to begin the swing. The second click is at the top of the power meter to set the strength of the swing. The third click is at the bottom of the power meter to set the accuracy. But instead of just making your third click, you click and hold. The meter "arm" breaks into a joint, like an elbow. A second, crescent-moon-shaped meter is below the main power bar, and the second arm of the swing starts to move separately on this meter. You release (the fourth "click") at the midpoint to get a straight and true ball. Anything to the left or right is a hook or slice of varying degrees.
The idea has some merit in theory. Getting a closer approximation of the wrist snap and its interplay with the downswing must have looked good on paper and indeed may yet be worked into a new type of viable golf sim interface. Its implementation in Pro 18, however, just adds another needless layer of complexity with little payoff. It's a challenge to learn and master this new control, which is always welcome in the sometimes stale and repetitive world of computer golf, but the bang you get for the effort is small, and the four clicks are cumbersome. Besides, it's also redundant. Don't you already aim the ball separately from your fade or draw control? Doesn't the third click affect accuracy? When added to other shot design controls, such as stance, trajectory, clubface, and direction, the variables begin to get pretty deep and very difficult to track from shot to shot. Bizarrely, you can only turn this new interface off and select another if your golfer profile is set to amateur and not professional.
The mouse swing interface is even worse. It's one of the flat "sideways" dynamic swing controls, and besides being far too touchy, it's also based around a mysteriously unreadable power scale.
It's quite possible that my problems with the four-click interface and even the mouse swing in Pro 18 are tied to the overall shabby programming of ball behavior. There's no question that ball physics are totally screwed in this game. Balls bounce weirdly all about the course, roll unrealistically, and tend to hop out of the cup if you hit even a little hard. Playing with the trajectory settings yields perplexing results, such as worm-burners for any low-trajectory shot off the tee. Little effort has been put into making this feel realistic, which may be due to the game's simultaneous development for console and PC.
Though there are plenty of shot-creating options, there are no viewing options. You're exclusively limited to a fixed behind-the-golfer shot and a cutaway landing shot. An "analyze green" feature lets you zoom, spin, and generally check out the green, but these are preset views and not a free-roaming camera. You never seem to be able to get the right angle to read a green. Since the greens are badly rendered and shaped, they're almost impossible to read no matter how you spin and flip them. The only top-down view is in a pop-up screen called the "caddie guide." It provides some good information on the hole, including yardage, but obscures most of the screen and can't be used to aim.
Visually, Pro 18 can't even hold up against three-year-old games like Jack Nicklaus 4 and PGA Tour Pro. Everything is washed-out and faded, as if you're looking through a pair of dusty glasses. Pro golfers Jesper Parnevik, Tom Lehman, Mark O'Meara, Colin Montgomerie, Vijay Singh, Laura Davies, and Dottie Pepper have signed on and stood before the blue screen to provide opponents, but their video is fuzzy and jagged, with few movements and reactions. Also, their playing styles don't have any real distinguishing features. Three courses are included (down from four in the European version of the game): Royal County Down in Northern Ireland, the Lost City course at Sun City, South Africa, and Coeur d'Alene in Idaho. They're good courses, but they look so drab, from the fuzzy greens to the faded horizon, that it's hard to care. Sound is awful, with a ball-hitting-the-fairway effect that sounds like those freshness buttons that pop when you open a Snapple.
I guess there are some people who are either so addled by the retail shopping experience or are such completists that they might actually want to pick up this Yugo of golf sims. I'm still trying to figure out why anyone would want a golf game other than Jack Nicklaus 6, so I'm not even going to try to wonder why anyone would buy this bit of landfill.
