We Love Golf! Review

The beauty of a golf videogame (rather than actually playing golf) is threefold: 1) you don't need to fork out a fistful of dollars on a golf club membership, preppy clothes, and a fancy four door saloon car; 2) you can dispense with the snooty attitude and far-right political views, and 3) you don't have to walk anywhere. The only downside has typically been that the physical action of actual swinging a golf club is replaced with a less exciting swing meter and control pad, until now...

We Love Golf takes hold of the Wii's innovative motion controls, getting you swinging your Wii Remote with gusto in the process. This has been done in Wii golf games of the past - both Tiger Woods 08 and Wii Sports come to mind - but We Love Golf has implemented the golf swing into its gameplay with more success than its predecessors. The swing starts with you holding the Wii Remote face-up and pointing it downwards in front of you, while the power and accuracy are determined by the swing itself in the following ways:

As you perform the back swing, a golf club icon gradually moves up the power meter on the games HUD. This is followed by a second, automated icon and as soon as this chasing icon catches up with your icon, their meeting point determines the amount of power your shot will have. As a result, you have to control your backswing so that the club icon doesn't go haywire on the HUD, but you also have to balance this with a well extended backswing to give you enough power.

This, however, is only half of the battle. The meter on the HUD also has to be stopped on the way down for accuracy. You have to time your downswing so that the Wii Remote is pointing downwards (roughly where you'd be striking the golf ball in a real golf swing) at precisely the same time that the meter is returning to its start point on the HUD where a corresponding accuracy sweet spot is located. If it sounds complicated, it's actually not at all. After a few holes of getting used to the system it becomes second nature, and then it's simply a case of eliminating the bugs from your swing until you play like a regular Seve Ballesteros (he's pretty good these days, right?).

What this control system manages to do is feel like an actual golf swing at times, which is much more than other Wii golf games can boast. This is further achieved with subtle details to the We Love Golf swing that provide additional realism. For example, having to hold down the B button while taking a shot makes you hold the Wii Remote in a kind of golf grip, while imparting spin (using the 1 and 2 buttons) makes you extend this grip, thereby upping the difficulty. Similarly, tilting the Wii Remote clockwise or counter-clockwise opens or closes the club face respectively. This has the effect of performing a draw or fade shot so that you can avoid hazards etc.

This gameplay dynamic forms the centrepiece of We Love Golf's appeal and it's been woven into the game without a particularly steep learning curve so that it's not too alienating for casual gamers. We would perhaps have preferred some varying difficulty levels in the game (beyond the courses themselves) so that the golf swing wasn't quite so easy to master. After a few playthroughs, most gamers will have the swing mastered, performing full power shots with ease. What's more, the accuracy of your shots doesn't seem to be finely tuned enough to punish you for bad shots. We found that with fairway and tee shots, as long as the power was good then the accuracy was fairly unimportant. This is a real shame, particularly as getting the downswing right is the most challenging part of the swing and requires the most mastery. However, without a suitable punishment for getting it wrong, this mastery is fairly inconsequential.

Another pressing question is whether or not this gameplay has been put to good use on the courses themselves. In terms of style, We Love Golf has taken a lot from Everybody's Golf's book. Characters are cute and family friendly, while courses have endearing idiosyncrasies and are accompanied by a colourful visual style. This is hardly surprising when you chase the heritage of Camelot, which developed the original Everybody's Golf game. However, the team's latest crack at an accessible golf title lacks the trimmings of what the Everybody's Golf series has now become. The character progression (one of the most appealing features of Everybody's Golf) simply isn't present in We Love Golf, while the range of special shots is just nowhere near as intriguing.

The modes fail to liven up the challenge either, offering nothing but a bog standard Tournament mode (which opens up new courses), as well as a few individual challenges to take on as well. These are fairly rudimentary (e.g. Target Golf and a Near Pin Contest) with the Ring Shot offering the most originality (you have to hit your ball through rainbow rings around a hole and still make par). However, Ring Shot is limited to six challenges, making it a fairly short lived experience. Further play in the single-player game will eventually unlock skins of famous Capcom characters (e.g. Ryu and Ken), but that's hardly enough to keep you playing through what are some fairly bog standard single-player offerings. The multiplayer caters for up to 4 players, which you'd expect in a golf game, but online multiplayer is certainly a bonus.

As we mentioned earlier, the visuals lend heavily from Everybody's Golf games, whether it's the flames trailing a super powerful shot or beams of rainbow light spewing out of a hole after a successful chip-in. These sorts of graphics are certainly easy on the eye and they suit this kind of golf game well, but We Love Golf comes far short of beating Everybody's Golf at its own game as far as visual appeal is concerned. In fact, Everybody's Golf 2 on PSP looks quite a lot better than We Love Golf on the Wii, which is a tad disappointing to be honest. The option to upload Miis onto the golf course for a round is certainly welcomed, but this is also the game's graphical high point.

Throughout We Love Golf you're treated to a variety of sedating tracks for the various courses (with the exception of the Skull Island course, which is actually quite upbeat), while the tutorial voice that constantly talks at you from the Wii Remote is certainly courteous, if a little bit too much like a contestant from a Little Miss Universe pageant.