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Despite the title, King of Clubs isn’t an action game starring Robert De Niro as a manager of a chain of 1940’s nightspots that are the backdrop to his rise and fall as the greatest one-liner and all round comedy legend of all time. While that’s a release many of us would like to see, here we have something a little more light-hearted.
Instead King of Clubs is a golf game, or rather; a crazy golf game trapped in the soul of a puzzler. A decent golf game was one of the first things most gamers thought of when the Wii-mote was revealed, alongside a lightsaber duelling title of course. So far, despite the best efforts of Wii Sports and Tiger Woods, a truly great golf game is yet to materialise on the Wii, and it has been a while since we saw a title that really invigorated the genre on any other platform.
So King of Clubs is lucky enough to be ready to tee off against competition ready for the taking, and while it’s not likely to appeal to many true golf fans, it does seem to be packed with both variation and character. In the real world the ‘crazy’ part of crazy golf stops at the shoddily built windmills and dilapidated miniature houses with cartoon faces.
Instead, King of Clubs takes its chosen sport from the bleak, misty seafronts of the UK and plants it deep in the hillbilly world of the dusty badlands of Nevada. Juggling 1950’s Americana, Tiki themes, kitsch styling and a kind of saccharine Hammer Horror aesthetic, the next release from Oxygen applies ‘crazy’ to everything, from settings and characters to equipment and ball physics.
Every course is in many ways a puzzle game level, with multiple routes, a generous helping of moving obstacles, and the potential for some outrageous and intricate hole-in-ones. Aside from the elaborate courses, the main difference from real world crazy golf comes in the various clubs and balls available, which go way beyond the normal options of iron and wood.
Instead you can switch between a selection of balls at any point in a game, including winged balls that soar a great distance, sticky balls for slow shots, and bouncy balls that can be used to clear towering obstructions or ricocheted through corners. King of Clubs essentially makes balls into ammunition, as each one cannot be reclaimed after a successful swing. This means you have to stock up well before you step onto the various neon fairways, and watch that you don’t run out of a particular type of ball before your next chance to spend your winnings at the golf shop.
The controls are very basic, and with a wealth of game modes there is certainly plenty of potential here for party gaming with a group of friends, but there is also a downside to the simplicity. The mechanic for taking a swing includes a power bar and a ghost line to demonstrate the forthcoming trajectory of you shot, but it is still very hard to predict where your ball will end up, making any skill or competition with friends feel a little random.
On the Wii swinging the remote like a club appears to work reasonably well once you have had a few practices, but then throwing your hand over your shoulder does the same job. Like so many Wii games, King of Clubs proves that often it is just moving the remote that counts, not how you move it.
But while you can begrudge the control system, the game’s character is a little harder to resist. Usually anything that strives to be ‘wacky’ is a little crass and cringe worthy, but the dilapidated theme park that is home to the various holes is charming and eccentric, and its inhabitants do have a certain cool about them.
However, dilapidated isn’t an excuse for shoddy graphics, and on the PS2 in particular, there is some way to go before the game has a visual shine that matches its creative vision. There is a fine line between kitsch and ugly, and King of Clubs needs to work on keeping its balance as it traverses the two.
It’s a pun that is impossible to defy; King of Clubs has got lots of balls. It also has sass and attitude, and it is clearly driven by a jovial sense of fun, and while it would be great to see it do well, it needs a lot of tinkering before it guarantees itself success.
