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Golf. It has long been thought that this is a game old people play when they retire. It is. But golf sims, those can be a different story. Especially when they star our beloved Italian plumber, Mario. Welcome to my Mario Golf review. I hope you enjoy it. Mario Golf should have gotten a sleeper hit of the year award, because it was much better than everyone gave it credit for. The sheer amount of things to do in the game is incredible. Mario Golf supports up to four players, so it's a great party game. You can play up to 18 different characters. You start the game with four, and gain 6 characters by playing Get Character mode. Four others can be gained by completing special tasks in the game, and yet another four can be transferred from Mario Golf GBC. The game also has a Mini-Golf mode, a Slot Match where you select three clubs by means of a slot machine, a Skins Match, a Tournament, a Stroke Game where you shoot for distance, a Ring Match, where the object is to hit the ball through a number of rings and still make at least par, and finally, a Practice Mode to brush up on your swing. As you can see, this game has a lot to offer. The actual golf games themselves are incredibly detailed. Your swing meter is a bar at the bottom of your screen. To make a shot, you zoom out on the field and center a grid as close as possible to the cup, but still on the fairway. After you've lined up your shot, you press A. A small marker begins to travel from right to left on your screen. This is your power meter. You can change the amount of power in your shot by pressing A again. After you press A for the second time, your power meter begins to travel the other way. This is your accuracy meter. When you press the button will change the accuracy of your shot. Sounds simple, right? Wrong. For a shot to be accurate, the marker must stop between the ends of a smaller red bar placed below the power meter. This bar changes size depending on where you're shooting from, thus making it harder to be accurate. Ideally, you want full power and perfect accuracy. This can be a little hard to master, but once you do, it's quite simple. Another thing that must be taken into consideration is the wind speed and direction. In the upper right corner, A 3D pic of everybody's favorite ghost, Big Boo, acts as a windsock. Whichever way Boo's face points is the direction the wind is blowing. The number overlaid on him is the wind speed. Depending on the speed, you have to change the position of your grid so your ball doesn't get blown into the rough. So you see? Mario Golf is not only immensely fun, it's an in-depth golf sim as good as any Tiger Woods game. Mario Golf is played in the storybook environment of Mushroom Kingdom. You can play on up to I think up to eight courses. (Don't hold me to that.) This game is fun not only because of the Mario Characters, but also because of the fact that you must unlock everything. You start the game with one course and four players available to you. All the others must be unlocked. To unlock new characters, you have to beat them with a current one in Get Player mode. Courses are unlocked by playing a full eighteen-hole course and gaining course points. The better your score when you finish the game, the more course points you get, varying amounts of points, depending on how well the game was played. (I got one, cause I had so many birdies. Six, I think.) The music of Mario Golf is a little different than one might expect from a Mario game, but very fitting for the atmosphere. You can go from nice calm background music on the first hole to a trumpeting fanfare on the eighteenth. One very neat feature is the ability to taunt or cheer your opponents by pressing any C button or D Pad direction. The graphics of Mario Golf are beautiful with environments ranging from the monotonous whites and browns of Shy Guy Desert to the lush green fairway of Yoshi's Island. Mario Golf has basically perpetual replay value, and there's so much to do! If you don't have this game, I highly recommend it. I hate most sports games, but with the exception of Star Wars Episode One: Racer, (Also an excellent game!) all my sports games star Mario. This game is not only a complement to the Mario series, but to the Golf sim Genre. I would highly advise at least renting this game, because you won't regret it!
So how did you like my review? I know some of you probably want to raise Cain because I bother to review such an old game, especially when you can read IGN's review. Here are my reasons for doing this:
1. I enjoy it immensely. Sharing my knowledge with other gamers is very fun for me, and it's something I can't usually do in everyday life the way I can here on the boards.
2. I often read IGN's reviews and wonder why they pick about such small things as draw rate, fog, framerate and sound quality. The truth is, these highly trained pro reviewers see things that your average everyday Gamer would never even stop long enough to notice. Make no mistake, IGN's reviewers are very good at what they do, and they're excellent reporters. But sometimes, when someone's just looking for a fun game to buy, I think they enjoy an easy read like this. If you disagree, feel free to read IGN's review, too. It really doesn't matter to me.
3. Believe it or not, there are a ton of people who don't buy a game at release. They're smart enough to wait for it to show up at their local FuncoLand. Plus, there are always new faces showing up on the scene. I write my reviews for the newbies on the gaming scene, because I've been in it long enough to help them out.
Written by MegaManX502