Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Keith Schleicher

It seems like golf games have been around for a long time.  From Golf on the Atari 2600 to Real World Golf on the Xbox and PS2, those who haven’t wanted to take their real clubs on a long leisurely walk ruined by a small white ball have been able to virtually.  While the graphics have changed, the mechanics have largely stayed the same.

ProStroke Golf (PSG) for the Xbox and PS2 were released in late August of 2006.  With a control scheme that made the game more challenging since Front Page Sports: Golf.  Now those who want a little golfing action on the go with a bit more challenge have ProStroke Golf available to them on the PSP.

While you don’t need a graphical powerhouse for a golf game, it does help to immerse you in the experience.  While the trees give you a good obstacle to get around the course, the rest of the course looks rather flat.  The subtle bumps an dhills don't appear on the screen.  The edge between the rough and the green is visible, but until you end up with a ball in the rough you can’t see any long grass.  Once you can see the long grass, it’s barely visible and it seems to only show up in the area directly surrounding the ball.

Your golfer doesn’t look bad, but other than a few color changes you won’t be able to tell the difference between your golfer and anyone else in the way they swing.  The swing animation always looks the same no matter how you hit the ball or who hits the ball.  There are some golfers included in the game that look somewhat like their real-life counterpart, but unless you follow the sport religiously, you won’t recognize them.

The music during the menu selection screens is loud and gets annoying quickly.  It sounds like a piano with some drums and a rhythm guitar playing a melody at a very quick tempo.  It repeats often, making the menus annoying to go to.  You don’t have an option to turn them off either.

The ambient sounds of golf are produced in PSG, but they don’t sound like what you would expect.  The birds are chirping as you play, but the clapping of the invisible crowd sounds mushy.  They also seem to have a bit of a delay.  A few times I was already making my next shot while the crowd was still clapping.  They also stop abruptly as if someone hit the stop button on a CD player.

The announcers that they have don’t do a good job of convincing you that they are watching the action with you.  Often you’ll have a nice shot, but they’ll call it disappointing.  Other times you can be way off the mark and be told what an excellent shot it was.  The commentary isn’t helped by the fact that the announcers are dry as the Sahara desert.  They have no emotion in their voice at all.

While the console versions of PSG had two analog sticks, this isn’t possible on the PSP.  Not only that, the analog nub really wouldn’t be the best control scheme for something so precise.  Instead the developers use the R button to start your swing, and the L button to determine accuracy.  The D-pad controls your foot position and ball position, while moving the analog nub determines backspin on the shot.  The complexity of the controls makes it a requirement to go through the training at least once to get an idea of how the game controls work.

The problem is that the controls feel sluggish for the swing.  Not only that, but you can hit the ball almost the exact same way, and it feels like your results will be mixed every time.  When you are playing a golf game, you need consistency in your shots, and the wild randomness of the shots makes the game nearly unplayable.

Playing a round of golf in real life can take a while because you need to walk to the ball.  When playing a video game, the pace should be a little more brisk since you can be magically teleported to the ball.  All the time saved by that feature is taken up by the computer players you play with in career mode.  You can’t skip over their shots to help speed up the pace of the game either.  It doesn’t help that the game has to access the disc to load the graphics for the golfer who is up next.  These times the game feels more like you are watching golf than playing it.

You can create your own character in the game, much like other golf games like Tiger Woods.  The character creation is extremely limited though.  You choose a character, and then you can choose his hat, shirt, gloves, and trousers.  You only get two to choose from, and you are required to have a hat.  It’s nice that you have the ability to create your own character, but the lack of options is a real put-off.

The main portion of the game is the PSG Career mode.  Here you try to go through the tournament circuit and make a name for yourself.  You get five seasons of prove yourself through tournaments and challenges.  First you need to build your Renown on tour.  As you do well in events and challenges, your Renown increases.  You build Renown by completing specific tasks during your round.  You need to build up Renown so that you can get into the big money tournaments and win prize money.  These tournaments are similar to the ones you played in before, but they usually have more people competing against you as well as more money to win.

You select a day on the calendar and then you can play in a tournament if there is one scheduled that day, and you can play challenges on other days.  The challenges are actually shorter events that take less time than full tournaments, something that is perfect for a portable game.  However, it isn’t always easy to find these because they aren’t listed very well on the calendar.

The game wouldn’t be so bad if the shots were more consistent.  It’s incredibly easy to overshoot your target or come up short with your shot, even with the right percentage given to you.  Sometimes I overshot when I thought I didn’t hit the ball hard enough, and other times I expected the ball to go further when I tried to get a high power shot off.

A few other modes are available to play.  You can play a round where you set up the number of holes and the strength of the wind, as well as which course to play.  You can also play a tournament with up to 68 computer controlled opponents.  You can also play a network game with a friend, but it’s only Ad Hoc play, so you need to find a friend close to you who also has a copy of the game.

PSG features two real courses and sixteen fantasy courses.  This is actually a fair amount of courses to be able to play on a golf game.  It would have been nice if more real courses were available for you to play on.  The fantasy courses do offer up a nice challenge.

If you are real adventurous, a course editor is included.  The manual explains how to use the course editor well, and if you read it you should be well on your way to creating new courses.  However, the course editor doesn’t feature any kind of tutorials or help to assist you in creating a new course.  Also, the options for what you can put on the course are very limited, similar to the character creation mode.  This means that the editor will probably be left for the hardcore golf player.

It’s hard to beat the champ at his own game.  If you want to try, you better be ready to put your best foot forward or you’ll be left out of the pack.  ProStroke Golf on the PSP doesn’t measure up to its big brother counterparts on the Xbox or PS2, and it doesn’t measure up to the other golfing games available on the PSP.  If you are dying for a course editor, then this might be your best bet at making your fantasy golf course on the go.  Otherwise, the game is largely forgettable.

Gaming Trend Score

50

1. Graphics: 68
2. Audio: 54
3. Controls: 30
4. Gameplay: 42
5. Value/Replay: 62
6. OVERALL:50