Everybody's Golf 3

Golf is a fairly serious sport, as are most golf games. It’s good to have an alternative, a ‘Happy Gilmore’ if you will to shake up and receive displeased frowns from the older and more traditional golf games. And nothing shakes up old fogies more than cartoons…

Aimed at people after a casual round or two, Everybody’s Golf is immediately welcoming and doesn’t intimidate you immediately with a range of technical options – well not until after you delete a few old game saves on your card, Everybody’s Golf takes up a whopping 820kb chunk of your memory card! Getting started after this though is a no-brainer.

To hit the ball, Everybody’s Golf uses a ‘three press’ system, meaning you have to press the button three times, once to start the swing, once to set the max power and once more to set the accuracy of your shot. You can also add spin to your shot by using the D-Pad. It takes a round or two to get the timing down, but you’ll be nailing your shots like a pro in no time. Before you hit your shot you can also move the camera along the path you have set for your shot and also choose from a variety of camera angles so you never get disorientated.

Controlling your character and hitting perfect shots isn’t hard, but there is still a lot of challenge to the game. The course designs are brilliantly done, anyone can get a ‘par’ but to knock a few shots off is often a whole lot trickier. There are plenty of hazards such as water, bunkers and tree’s – all of which are placed intelligently. To get the most out of your game you will have to learn to respect each course and plan out your path before hand.

Graphically the game is excellent with the actual locations looking near photo realistic. All the courses are interesting to look at too although the backgrounds can look a little disjointed. There are lots of nice subtle effects such as the time of day progressing as you play and being able to play each hole at different times of the year. All the characters are pretty goofy looking, as is the way your caddy runs after the balls you hit or the way the crowd slides out of the way of the ball when you try and conk them on the head. Maybe it would have been nice though to have one or two characters that are a little less stereotypical and annoying for when the other characters on offer start to grate.

The sound is a bit mixed, there is no music to distract you whilst playing which is probably for the best, but the character voices will soon get on your nerves. Do I really need to hear ‘Nice Shot!” every single time I hit the ball? I think not. Sound effects are mostly good, but there are a few samples that don’t quite sound right.

Whilst it doesn’t do anything new, Everybody’s Golf is a very easy game to play casually, just hitting a ball around the course whilst you have a cup of tea or to play seriously playing all 18 holes in one go. Whilst more serious enthusiasts may prefer the real courses and players of Tiger Woods, those that don’t really follow the sport but still want to hit a few balls would be better off here – different strokes for different folks.