Well the other day I went and picked up Mario Golf for the GCN I played my brothers version of Mario Golf to death on the N64, and the price at gone down on the GCN version so I decided to pick it up. Mario Golf is still a solid Golf Game, but it has just a few flaws in it.
Story.
Well Mario doesn’t seem to save the world has much back in the good old days. He either kart racing, recovering from all his partying, or playing golf. He back at playing Golf now in the toad stool tour.
Graphics.
The graphics in the game are pretty good, Mario and the crowd are down in there usual cartoonish format. The colors are bright and there easy to look out. While the characters are cartoonishley done the courses look a bit more real with good grass tones, and some realistic water effects. One of the most impressive courses would be the Peach castle course where you have to hit the ball down a wanabe Niagara falls. The graphics in this game are great.
Sound
Some good golf music. Nothing that will bother you while your shooting but something that will keep you entertain. There are a few Mario tunes mixed in there of course. Each character has there own voice or sound effects that come up whenever they do things like swing at the ball, or whenever they start to throw taunts at each other. The voices are done by the usual Mario squad so if you’ve played a Mario Game since Mario 64 then you’ll now what to expect.
Gameplay.
Well the game of golf is easy you take a small ball a couple of big clubs whack it towards a small hole. You only have a few hits to get it into the hole and achieve par. If you hit over par your score goes up, under par your score goes down, the smallest score wins.
Mario Golf Toadstool Tour you get to pick from 12 characters right away, and all of them are Mario themed characters (compared to the 4 characters you start out with and only 1 Mario character). Each one of them has there advantages and disadvantages. There stats differ from distance, power, spin, height these will affect the ball and the calculations of the ball.
Once you select the character that’s right for you select a mode and there are several modes, but the main ones are the tournament and the VS modes. Once select and you select any of the courses available and your out to hit the range. My favorite is of course by favorite from last game, Wario. Now here is where players will notice a few changes from Mario Golf.
While the main game is still the same in the control areas they added something new in to dumb it down to a 3 year old level, introducing the auto swing. For those of you to dumb or lazy to make sure the little line hit’s the impact area after you measure your hit the auto swing will take care of that. It won’t guarantee the perfect hit you need, or where your ball will wind up but it will make sure you won’t wiff it. Seriously it’s a useless feature that is only going to be used by people who are to lazy to worry about lining up the 2nd part of there shot. And like I said it doesn’t even guarantee an honest hit.
What it does though makes us on manual have to worry about hitting more buttons because it’s A to start the swing and then B if you want to do the manual 2nd line up. The switching does screw you up the first few times. All though it’s not all bad Nintendo added in an easy back spin and top spin ability. To do a top spin after selecting manual hit A twice fast when you line up, to do back spin due B twice to get a little backspin action.
The overall golf engine in the game is pretty good, but it doesn’t feel has tight has hot shots golf 3. And the fact that they dumbed a lot of it down to a 3 year old’s level (come on now wind in the first course) makes it a bit on the easy side. Luckily Nintendo has added in a few extras in order to keep the challenge up.
The courses are your usual in a golf game there are the first 2 which are the averagely done golf courses. Then you start off with one made out of little islands, one in the desert but the game doesn’t get intresting in till the Peaches tournament comes along. We finally see a little bit of Mario in Mario golf. With warp pipes that can send a ball straight to a green, to chain chomps that spit the ball out of bounds. The courses are fun and different but they don’t get challenging in till the last 2.
Different modes include.
Ring Shot. Shoot balls through rings and then make par to pass the challenge. Coin attack which is similar to ring except you collect coins and see how many you can get in a course. Speed golf in how fast you can get past a course. Then there is slots where your golf clubs are randomly generated by a slot machine. There is also a mini game mode that helps you learn approaching and putting skills. And finally an interesting mode called Doubles. In doubles you choose two characters and then pick one of several modes of scoring and go on the course. One character takes a shot and then gives the club to the other character. It’s a fun mode to play in especially in 2P.
Final Recommendation.
Nintendo might have dumbed some of the game down a bit. The game gives you way to many people to start out with, an auto swing, and the first tournament you go through doesn’t have any wind to effect your ball. However the last 2 have some fun courses and there’s plenty to do after tournament mode. If you liked the original Mario golf or like Hot Shots Golf 3 for the PS2 then Mario Golf Toad stool tour is up your alley.
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