Did rain screw up your tee time? No problem. Pop in Tiger Woods and have a round at home!
I found the single player to be pretty mundane but once you add a couple of people into the mix, all jinxing and hollering at eachother, the game could get pretty fun.
GAMEPLAY
The gameplay is pretty much what you'd expect from a golf game. There are a tonne of customization options for your golfer which was nice.
Course selection seemed descent though I have nothing to compare it to. As someone who will only pull it out when company is over I'm quite confident the courses won't get old any time soon.
There are several gameplay modes for you to choose from to play whatever sort of game you like.
There is a practise mode which is very nice as you can take a few swings to really fine tune how much power you need, this is especially handy for shots when you only need to use partial swing power. You can enter practise mode and take as many swings as you like at any time during a game, though putting practise functions a little differently.
There is something called a "putt preview" which will allow you to try a shot and show the balls exact path. The difference from the normal swing practise mode is that with putt preview you only have a set amount of time alloted for each round so you have to be more quick and choose your practises wisely.
GRAPHICS
The graphics are nothing special with much less detail on the environment than I would have liked.
The character models are reasonable but nothing noteworthy, in fact they leave you wanting a bit more. Luckily in a game of this kind the graphics don't matter as much as there aren't any explosions or scary monsters.
SOUND
Sound is fine, nothing too annoying here. The commentators are pretty entertaining and can say some funny things but do a good job of talking about what is going on in the game.
CONTROLS
The controls in general were pretty responsive. A slight lag is noticeable if you try to slowly drag your swing forward and back, but when swinging normally, the tracking feels quite good. When putting it's a little more difficult to control your backswing and follow through.
There is a mechanic in the game that allows you to attempt to control your ball in mid-air. This consists of holding the d-pad in the direction you want and shaking the Wii Remote. Nothing fun about it and it's another one of those things you feel like they threw in at the last minute.
Something that is a little off putting at first is that you won't be doing "true" golf swings". That is, if you swing the remote as hard as you do in a real game it will be much too much. It's odd to get used to taking a golf swing and really toning down how hard you shoot. Ideally it would have been nice to swing just like you do on the links.
VALUE
For the single player there is not much value to me. I will hardly ever pull it out and play a game alone. Where it's real worth comes in is when you have someone to play with. This game can be really fun with a few beers and some trash talking.
So all in all the game is worth giving a try. If you are someone who does not usually play golf games, you might find that the Wii remote's functionality is just the difference needed to actually make it fun.
I wouldn't say it's worth the full price but I'd definitely pick up a used copy at a reduced price knowing what I now know about the game.