awoolcott's Full Review: ESPN Final Round Golf 2002 for Game Boy Advance (G...
Golf games are perfect for portable consoles like the Game Boy. Because of the relaxed pace and without the intense action of oater sports, you can make a pretty decent golf game that's good for a quick 18 holes, perhaps while waiting in the car for the real course to open up on Saturday morning. One such game is ESPN Final Round Golf 2002. Released early in the Game Boy Advance's lifecycle, ESPN Final Round is one of the projects by the last owner of the ESPN franchise, Konami. While it lacks the depth of other games on the home consoles like Links or Tiger Woods PGA Tour, ESPN Final Round offers just enough playability to be a fine golf game for both single and multiple players. For $5-10 dollars, you should be able to get your money's worth with ESPN Final Round Golf.
ESPN Final Round Golf contains 4 distinct 18 hole courses and about a dozen golfers - none of them real, but all differing in play style; some are weak hitters but extremely accurate, some are John Daly-esque in strength but putt like a blind man, while others are well-rounded, but not overly skilled in any category. Figuring out which player suits you best is part of the challenge. You can play out the courses in a few different modes - Tournament play, where you battle other golfers to earn money (that means exactly nothing since you do nothing with it) over each of the 4 courses, regular stroke play for single and multiplayer, Match play for 2 players, and a practice round that is good for screwing around and learning the ropes. All the multiplayer is hosted on one GBA, making this a pass the GBA (or pass the controller if you're playing on a Game Boy Player) kind of game, given that you don't all play at once. Match play stands out as a hugely competitive and fun mode of play with a friend, and it's really where you learn how to play the game.
On the course, ESPN Final Round Golf maintains the traditional 3 button press meter that was standard in golf games until analog control became the norm...and since there's no analog sticks on the GBA, ESPN Golf can't exactly use them. This system works fine though, requiring precision to hit the buttons at the right time for distance and accuracy when lining up a shot. You're given a fly-over of where the ball will land before taking other things into consideration (i.e. wind, elevation, your incompetence at swinging the club, etc). However, this not perfect (especially compared with other games that have this feature, like Links 2004 on the Xbox), as the game tends to give you the wrong club and fail to estimate the amount of roll or bounce when you hit the ball. Thus, I'd advise checking the clubs (which is easily changed by using the R button), and taking everything into consideration before shooting - though it's a real trial-and-error affair figuring out the right way of hitting the ball. In this area, the game divides those who play golf and those who don't, as knowledge of the real game will carry you far.
Putting works about the same, only you need to press the button once to initiate the shot, making sure you don't hit it too hard that it blows right by the hole, or too weak that you miss by 10 feet (granted, it's impossible to really screw up unless you read the green completely wrong). Prior to striking the ball, you get a green shot, with elevation and movement shown (by using arrows that more resemble Chocobo tracks than anything), to help you line it up right. If you know how to read a green, this is no problem, but otherwise, it takes a few rounds to learn just how this works. Naturally, if there is no elevation or movement, this is no problem, and as long as you hit it right, it will go in, making putting a wee bit simplistic sometimes.
However, despite its flaws, ESPN Final Round Golf 2002 is perfect for a quick bit of portable golf. The game moves along at a quick pace, playing 18 holes in roughly 15-20 minutes, which is always good. The multiplayer is intense and outstanding, making for some competitive moments where one mistake can screw you in match play. The Tournaments are also pretty challenging, especially when you get to the more challenging tournaments that require precision hitting and putting to defeat skilled competition. At first, anyhow - once you learn the game and its little tricks, it becomes quite easy, aside from mental screw-ups that happen here and there. It's no Links, or Tiger Woods...or not even Outlaw Golf, but ESPN Golf, for its bargain-bin price, is a good game that provides enough entertainment to last a good while - because sometimes, simple gameplay is all you really need to have fun playing games.
The graphics of ESPN Final Round Golf match up to its era - the GBA launch era. Mixing in some badly done 3D elements with traditional 2D overhead sprites, the game comes off as a hodgepodge of technology that looks mostly ugly. The golfer models are not too bad, looking more like digitized players in the vein of old-school Mortal Kombat characters than sprites. Environments are mostly done in 3D, but appear flat and sometimes even disappear off the screen creating one butt-ugly golf course. When the game shifts into 2D mode, however, the details of the sprites and different effects (as in, sand, water, the difference between rough and fairway, etc) look good and probably should have been used all over. ESPN overlays are around as well, naturally, but aren't quite as ESPN-ish as the current batch of games in that line from Sega. Along with the strange and clumsy markings for green reading, ESPN looks okay in places, awful in others, and sharp in yet other places. At the least, this was one of the few early GBA games that didn't require 5 halogen lamps and a coal miner's helmet to see it before the GBA SP arrived and saved the world millions of dollars/yen/euros/pecos/etc. on vision insurance.
The audio kicks off well, with a fully recreated edition of the ESPN golf music that plays during real tournaments. From there, the game trickles into cheesy, mega 16-bit music that's actually not bad - and each of the players actually gets their own tune that plays, like a theme song. Only they don't have managers who attack opposing golfers with golf clubs or pelt them with balls or steel chairs. The effects consist of the crowd cheering when you make a great shot, or gasping when you make a mistake and hit the ball where you shouldn't be hitting it. This is a GBA game, after all, so they can only do so much. Still, it's never distracting, and fits right in with the game, thus it's fine by me.
The Bottom Line
There are better, more in-depth golf games than ESPN Final Round Golf, but for the price you'd pay for it now, it's a good buy if you like golf or just like golf games. It might be a bit easy after being quite awkward at first, but both the single and multiplayer action is exciting and fast paced, making for a good time. While Konami's time with the ESPN license is pretty much a blotch on their legendary name, at least ESPN Final Round Golf turned out to be a solid, if not outstanding, portable golf game that, for a low price, can provide quite a bit of entertainment.
Bargain Bin Write-off
This review is part of the Bargain Bin Write-off, hosted by rice75. For more information, and to enter yourself, click here.
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