Recently I've had golf fever. First I was playing Mario Golf on my Nintendo 64, then playing real-life miniature golf, and finally buying two golf games on the same day. One of them is an absolutely fantastic masterpiece on console systems (which I'll review later), while this is a NES classic remade for the e-Reader. At $5, it's not too much of a risk to try out one of these old games, hoping for a steal. However, the only good game for the e-Reader I've played was Mario Party-e, and it didn't even require the e-Reader. The NES games featured have been pretty short and poor, but that doesn't mean they all are, and that was part of my motivation for buying Golf-e. Would Golf-e break the NES e-Reader curse?
Even though I've been over at GameFAQs quite a bit lately, it still doesn't mean I'm bringing over their scoring scale for all of their reviews. This Review still follows my 0-4 star scale that I've always used and will always use.
Graphics: **1/2
I can't quite complain about the graphics, especially since they're from a NES game. In fact, the graphics are quite favorable even when compared to the GBC's Mario Golf. They aren't great, and they don't stretch the limits of the NES like Super Mario Bros. 3 did. Still, you can see your golfer and the surroundings directly in front of him on the side. Like many other games, the graphics have almost no effect on the game.
Sound: no stars
There's no music to this game whatsoever. There are a few beeps if you're on the green trying for birdie, or if you go out of bounds, or in the water. Also, there are sound effects when your ball is in the air. These sound effects are more annoying than anything else. This is about as boring in the sound category as a game could possibly get.
Difficulty: ****
This game is made very hard by poor controls, a hard-to-control meter, and no way of knowing how far your shot will go. The record score of +28 (100) stored in the game's memory is actually outrageously hard to beat. I'll expound on the reasons why later.
Characters: 1/2
While there's only one character in the game (your golfer), this category has almost no effect on the game at all. I just want to bring up the debate of whether the golfer is Mario or not. Some say he is, some say no. He's definitely fat, but a lot fatter than Mario. Now I can see Mario wearing normal clothes (like in Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!), but I don't know if Mario would let his weight get as out of hand as this golfer did. This golfer is fatter than Wario, and that pretty much tells me that this golfer most likely isn't Mario, but maybe was made to look a little like Mario.
Controls: no stars
Now the game starts getting ugly. When shooting, you don't have 360 control over your shot, or anything close to that. You get 16 angles you can shoot at, and that may seem like a lot. However, let's consider that you're shooting this ball an imaginary 200+ yards. The difference between shooting north-northwest and northwest is huge. In some situations, you may have the unfortunate choice of shooting into trees (O.B., or Out of Bounds) or shooting into the water, both of which incur penalties. That has led me to getting +7 or +8 on a single hole!
That's not all, however. The meter goes a lot faster than in Mario Golf, and is a lot less merciful. Miss by a little bit, and you're O.B. If you accidentally start the meter with the wrong club, you can't cancel the shot by not hitting anything else like in Mario Golf. I tried doing this and I ended up seeing my shot go about 2feet to the right. Of course, I didn't really know howfar my shot went because of one other thing that I'll talk about in the Gameplay section directly below.
Gameplay: 1/2
I'll be nice: this section gets half a star because its meters were the inspiration for Mario Golf. However, Mario Golf was able to make these meters worthwhile and very useful. This game really didn't do that.
Here's another problem which ruins the game. You have no idea how far each of your woods and irons can hit the ball. In Mario Golf, you'd always know, even in the GBC version. Not in this version. It's a guessing game to see whether your shot will hit the fairway or the trees and go out of bounds. This also goes for putting, which is total guessing. You don't know how far a putt will go, so it's pretty much guaranteed that you will at least two-putt the hole.
If you land in a bunker, you're in trouble. Your driver (1W) is your strongest club, yet I've used it in a bunker and been unable to get the ball out of the sand! I have to use a PW or SW, which plops my ball out of the bunker, but it only goes about 15 yards, or so I think, because there's no way of knowing how far your shot went. Anyway, it's about as bad as landing in the water, sometimes even worse.
Finally, in lots of golf courses, hitting the ball into a bunch of trees does not mean you're going out of bounds. That just makes your shot a lot harder. Of course, not on this golf course, which may have been fun to play on with Mario Golf controls. That's part of the reason why I'm not putting a section for the course itself, because it's not fair to rate a course if the controls ruin it.
Replayability: 1/2
This game is made a lot less replayable because of the fact that two modes from the original NES version are not here, which are 2-player stroke play and 2-player match play. "Well, of course they're not available," you may say. "The e-Reader doesn't support two players, you imbecile!" Wait a minute... didn't the N64's Mario Golf let you use only one controller to control four players? Couldn't you just give the GBA to someone else when it was their player's turn? I guess Nintendo didn't feel like putting the effort into doing this, which may have made this game at least replayable and fun enough so I'd at least somewhat enjoy the game. Competition with other live opponents is always at least a little fun, even in a poor game.
Where's the half-star from? Well, maybe you can get the hang of this game and start to break 100. Then you'll actually want to break your own records. Of course, none of them will be very good, considering how hard it is to control this game.
Fun Factor!: no stars
I think I've pretty much told you exactly why this game is no fun. I don't know how else to say it.
OVERALL: no stars
You may not like seeing me show no mercy towards a game, but I want to let you know all the reasons why not to get it, even if it only costs $5 in the United States. This game is one of the worst ever, ranking down there with Baseball for that title of "worst sports game ever". The GBC was only 8-bit and it was able to handle a golf game (Mario Golf) and make it actually pretty good. There's no reason this game couldn't have been made at least a little easier to control. This doesn't mean all NES sports games are bad, however. If Nintendo puts out Ice Hockey for the e-Reader, you'll soon find out that sports on the NES weren't all that bad...
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