Mario Golf Is One Of The Better Golf Games That Has Been Released.
Way back when in the beginning of 2000, Nintendo, along with game designer company Camelot, developed a golf game for Mario characters. Needless to say, this was met with much chagrin by the older gaming crowd. People took one look, saw Mario on the cover swinging a club, shook their heads and said ''This will never work...''
Gameplay : First and foremost, Mario Golf is a golf sim, and this is where the game excels. There is no Mario type stuff to get in your way while you play the game.
The physics are near perfect. As far as actual swinging gameplay, you'll have club selection, adjusting point of impact, and a timed sliding mechanism so you can try for how far or how well you hit the ball.
As far as the holes go, rain comes into play sometimes, and of course, the dreaded wind. Courses themselves have the standard fairways, sand traps, water hazards and greens of any other golf course. The only place where things can get a little outlandish is on later courses when the only in-bounds areas on some holes are raised plateaus spaces rather far apart.
There are many different ways of playing, too. First and foremost is the Tournament, where you compete to earn trophies and get Birdie Badges. Another major player is the Get Character mode, where you can challenge one of the game's locked characters for the privilege of using them. Characters can be standard Mario folk, but there are also basic humans as well. There's Speed Golf, to find out who can finish the course the quickest, and Ring Shot, where you have to shoot through rings as well as get the ball in the hole. There's also a mini golf course to test your putting skills.
Multiplayer gives you more options, with being able to play straight Stroke Play, Skins Matches, and Betting play.
The early courses and characters are a snap to get into. Once you get further on, things become hard to brutal. High winds, incredibly good and strong opponents, and painfully hard courses up the ante very nicely.
With all the options mentioned, it can be easy to spend a long time on this game. There's just some strange addictive nature to it...
Gamers are quite busy people, so the addition of a Save In-Game feature is very useful, indeed.
W..wait. You have selectable Mario, AND Baby Mario? Err?
Graphics : Very good describes it well. Attention to detail was paid. Cute little Mario related things are thrown in regularly. The characters look their standard polygonal decency, if not a little better.
As the action is light, there are no problems with framerate or slowdown anywhere.
Perhaps the only annoying thing was the trees were texture maps. It was difficult to tell exactly where a tree was in relation to your character. Fortunately, trees rarely play a factor in gameplay.
Sound : The music was very light and appropriate for a Mario-related golf sim. A few Mario related tunes, which is fine. There is some nice situational music, especially when putting. If you're going for birdie or better, the music takes on a bass tone, and tries to keep quiet for your concentration purposes. If you're going for par, the music is light and relaxing, and if you're bogey or worse, the music switches to a slightly lower tone, and tries to get out of the way so you can finish the hole.
Sounds are also few and far between. Nothing
As everyone knows, golf sims aren't for everyone. Having played a lot of them, though, I was quite impressed with this game. After one rental, I'm ready to add it to my library.