Golfism and why I get upset at Tiger Woods, a brief essay
gribbley
Registered User new member
Registered User new member
So I see there's another Tiger Woods related panel this week.
Whenever there's one of these, I always feel there's an implicit, and sometimes explicit criticism of the available selection of golf games. A cry for something better but in some simple, pared down way; fewer bells, less whistling and more golfism.
This has always nagged at me and it's finally brought me to the point of posting my first ever forum message. There are, after all, plenty of thoroughly excellent but more arcadey golf games out there; the Hot Shots/Mario Golf games spring to mind and these have quite successfully resisted the siren's call of shiny new control schemes that Tiger and Links (may it rest in peace) felt the need to dabble with.
More specifically, it feels to me that there's a lost gem buried in the weekly avalanche of XBLA content:
Housemarque's Golf, Tee It Up was released a full year ago now to a damning fanfare of entirely average review scores and I've always felt it to be an injustice.
Having played it for many an hour now, on and offline, it seems to me that while it's just yet another example of a Leaderboard style *tap*tap*tap* golf game, it is also, simultaneously, the very perfected distillation therein.
Some of the points I'd offer up for discussion if people felt so inclined:
* Its courses are not, as they might first appear, just an excuse to show off an evolved Supreme Snowboarding engine in a cutesy context. They're exquisitely honed with pitch and drive perfect length, obstacle placement. Far from linear, they're designed to punish the skilled as much as the beginner by tempting them with sneaky but risky shot saving shortcuts.
* The initially apparently superfluous overpower meter, just another 'we've got to have one of those to be feature complete' addition, feeds directly into this risk/reward/punishment mechanic as you realise it's not just for getting the furthest drive off the tee.
* Again, the typically standard draw/fade/drop/roll shot mechanic tempts the more skilled user to drop a tricky ball in an artfully specific place each and every shot while being transparent to the point of absence for casual players.
* The bulletball time mechanic reinforces the construction of the maps as an entire course rather than a series of discrete holes as you begin, through practise, to save time from easier holes for ones that feature joyously sneaky optimisations or toothache painful traps and pitfalls and the fact that it saps time from the very same pot as the overpower meter means that even skilled players can suffer a failure of form every bit as punishing as real golfists. I'm sure I wake up from nightmares of the 18th hole of the second course even now.
* All of the controls and all of the mechanics of network multiplayer, from the costly ball path prediction button to the overhead map and zoom to target buttons as well as the optional overpower and spin controls are crafted so that an expert user can refine their shot with autistic optimality while their casual gaming teammate simultaneously takes their turn with a frustration free *tap*tap*tap*
It's really not that it does anything new and exciting. What we read about so often with these Tiger Woods PA strips is that the new and exciting is also very often the broken and frustrating. It's just a golf game that took an unusual amount of care to get the small details right and I do wish it was recognised and rewards more as such.
Whenever there's one of these, I always feel there's an implicit, and sometimes explicit criticism of the available selection of golf games. A cry for something better but in some simple, pared down way; fewer bells, less whistling and more golfism.
This has always nagged at me and it's finally brought me to the point of posting my first ever forum message. There are, after all, plenty of thoroughly excellent but more arcadey golf games out there; the Hot Shots/Mario Golf games spring to mind and these have quite successfully resisted the siren's call of shiny new control schemes that Tiger and Links (may it rest in peace) felt the need to dabble with.
More specifically, it feels to me that there's a lost gem buried in the weekly avalanche of XBLA content:
Housemarque's Golf, Tee It Up was released a full year ago now to a damning fanfare of entirely average review scores and I've always felt it to be an injustice.
Having played it for many an hour now, on and offline, it seems to me that while it's just yet another example of a Leaderboard style *tap*tap*tap* golf game, it is also, simultaneously, the very perfected distillation therein.
Some of the points I'd offer up for discussion if people felt so inclined:
* Its courses are not, as they might first appear, just an excuse to show off an evolved Supreme Snowboarding engine in a cutesy context. They're exquisitely honed with pitch and drive perfect length, obstacle placement. Far from linear, they're designed to punish the skilled as much as the beginner by tempting them with sneaky but risky shot saving shortcuts.
* The initially apparently superfluous overpower meter, just another 'we've got to have one of those to be feature complete' addition, feeds directly into this risk/reward/punishment mechanic as you realise it's not just for getting the furthest drive off the tee.
* Again, the typically standard draw/fade/drop/roll shot mechanic tempts the more skilled user to drop a tricky ball in an artfully specific place each and every shot while being transparent to the point of absence for casual players.
* The bulletball time mechanic reinforces the construction of the maps as an entire course rather than a series of discrete holes as you begin, through practise, to save time from easier holes for ones that feature joyously sneaky optimisations or toothache painful traps and pitfalls and the fact that it saps time from the very same pot as the overpower meter means that even skilled players can suffer a failure of form every bit as punishing as real golfists. I'm sure I wake up from nightmares of the 18th hole of the second course even now.
* All of the controls and all of the mechanics of network multiplayer, from the costly ball path prediction button to the overhead map and zoom to target buttons as well as the optional overpower and spin controls are crafted so that an expert user can refine their shot with autistic optimality while their casual gaming teammate simultaneously takes their turn with a frustration free *tap*tap*tap*
It's really not that it does anything new and exciting. What we read about so often with these Tiger Woods PA strips is that the new and exciting is also very often the broken and frustrating. It's just a golf game that took an unusual amount of care to get the small details right and I do wish it was recognised and rewards more as such.
gribbley on
0
Posts