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By and large you should know what to expect from a Mario Golf game. It’s one of those releases where the title kind of gives everything away. This is Mario. And this is golf.
Following on in very much the same vein as previous titles in the series – particularly Mario Golf: Advanced Tour on the GBA – this is (for the uninitiated) an Everybody’s Golf experience but with Nintendo characters, and Miis, thrown in for good measure. Even from a control standpoint it simply follows the ‘tap button once for power, once again for accuracy’ method that’s been used since the dawn of man.
Although that may sound disparaging, World Tour’s strengths lie in how moreish it is.
This is largely down to how well the foundations are set out. While you can jump into a course straight from the off with all your favourite Nintendo mascots*, tackling the main crux of Mario Golf sees you assume the role of your Mii and start focusing on knocking the moustached one off his perch.
You’ll have to earn a handicap, work your way through lower-ranked tournaments and level up the digital version of you as you go (from your club set to the snazzy clothes you wear), but the sense of progression is constantly satisfying. The fact you can blitz through courses rather quickly, should you so wish, just adds to its addictive nature.
That’s not to say you haven’t played it all before – I’d wager you most definitely have, thousands of times – but that doesn’t make it any less engrossing. The addition of online tournaments and the potential to download new holes and characters just adds to what’s already on offer. It hasn’t been implemented perfectly (online remains an area Nintendo seems destined to struggle with for at least a little while longer) but it’s serviceable.
World Tour does nothing to advance golf games to wherever it is they need to go next – I think we can all admit the genre has become incredibly stale – but it still manages to entertain. And that, my friends, is no bad thing.
*VideoGamer.com would like to apologise for using such a generic and, frankly, awful statement.
Played for 7 hours. Moaned about having to use my Mii for 7 hours.
