 |
|
 |
| |
Chad's Mario Golf Review
Camelot did a very odd thing with the graphics. The actual golf portion of the game (courses, textures, etc.) is magnificent. Watching a power shot fly through the air in a close-up view is one of the greatest things on the Nintendo 64. Not to mention the fact that the green looks like a green, the fairway looks like a fairway, the semi-rough looks like a semi-rough, and so on, unlike most golf sims. One of the best parts of this, though, is the close-up view of where the ball lands. It doesn't just think "rough" and give you a pre-rendered sprite of a ball on the rough. It shows you the actual ball you just hit. For example, if you land right between a bunker and the rough, you'll see a slightly green, slightly sand-colored ground. Also, the menus look great, and the course design is awesome. Course Six can't be beat. But the odd part of the graphics is that Camelot decided to combine beautiful golf elements with wretched polygonal characters. I swear, I have never seen such an awful model of Donkey Kong in my life... and this includes the scribblings of my four-year-old neighbor. Fortunately, though, this is a minor aspect of the overall game, so the score doesn't suffer too much.
8.7
The sound is everything it should be in a golf game: Bright, sunny, and fun. The music itself is good, but it doesn't droll along in the background, nor does it make you hum the tune, breaking your concentration. Camelot did a good job with this. The sound effects themselves are perfect, be it a ball clunking off the bottom of the cup, or the club connecting for a "Nice Shot". The sound feature was even boosted with the presence of "Taunt" buttons, in which players who are not playing can make noises to try and mess up the one golfing. This great idea was later used by Hudson Soft in Mario Party 2, even though it doesn't require nearly as much accuracy.
9.4
Mario Golf housed a fairly good play control setup. You swung with A, directed your shot with the control stick and Z, and changed the views with R, and the C buttons. Pretty basic stuff, but it all worked well. Once you get on the green, the use of the R button comes in very handy. It sends the camera directly behind the hole and brings up a wireframe of the ball's path so you can better tell which way it will roll. If you rent this game, please do not judge it on the difficulty of pressing A at the appropriate time to get a decent shot. After a few good hours of gameply you'll be hitting Nice Shots left and right. So basically, the control scheme on Mario Golf is nothing monumental, but it serves the purpose well.
8.9
I wish I had done this review before playing Mario Golf's Game Boy incarnation, because nothing can beat an RPG/Golf mix for originality. I'll try to set this bias aside for now, so my review is not skewed. If you've ever played other golf RPG's, you'll see that they're basically nothing more than golf. Mario Golf takes some of Camelot's other excellent golf engines and adds to them. Besides the standard tournament and unlocking of characters, you've brought in a plethora of Nintendo mascots (okay, well, two) and added upon that, just to name a few, Ring Golf, Speed Golf, Putt-Putt, and the always fun Club Roulette. And at least this game doesn't have that damned Golf Guru.
9.3
There aren't really many DKU games that are truly addictive. Sure, once you beat them it's always fun to run around in the various worlds, and such, but on this game you just keep wanting to play. Oh no! Your favorite show is about to come on! Well, you can't stop now, because you're whupping Maple in a match game and you have to keep playing while you're on a roll! This is the kind of thing you experience. Mario Golf isn't tediously addictive, like Tetris. There is actually some variety. Well, all-in-all, I think I speak for everyone when I say that I'm thankful some caveman picked up a stick and used it to hit a rock into a dinosaur's head*, thereby inventing golf.
9.4
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
