As you grow older your tastes change, it's an undeniable fact of life. The Griswold family roadster becomes more appealing than the latest turbo nutter Japanese sports car, the countryside seems like a nicer place to live than the big city and you'll find yourself attracted towards the more motherly types rather than the dangerous chicks you sniff round as a young chap. Your taste in video games will inevitably change, too. Aging gamers like myself, who were bought up on high-speed miracles like Speedball 2, Sonic and Street Fighter II Turbo, now find themselves digging pretty RPGs, the occasional RTS title and the more relaxing sports sims. It's inevitable; the more you grow up, the more you slow down. The fact that you can play all the above titles while pissed has got nothing to do with it.
With that in mind, when my copy of International Golf Pro turned up on my doorstep, my initial reaction was 'Hey great!' Then I noticed the Oxygen Interactive logo on the box and my enthusiasm waned a little. I wonder, can you teach an old dog new tricks?
Um no, not really.
For a start, the retail casing I received for review purposes had as many grammatical and syntactical errors as your average speech by the current US President, and Oxygen Interactive doesn't have the excuse of being dyslexic. Unless, that is, the whole company is, which would sure explain a lot. Not that being dyslexic implies incompetence though, the pretty thing I live with is dyslexic and, shy of struggling with subtitled movies, she's one of the quickest people I know.
But I digress, you're here to read about International Golf Pro. Well, International Golf Pro is cheap, not particularly cheerful and not all that much fun to play. Sadly, International Golf Pro is exactly what I was expecting from Oxygen; a shoddily put together game with dull presentation, bland graphics and even ropier game play. It's like a poor man's Tiger Woods. No, it's like a poor man's PGA Tour Golf, and I'm talking about the Megadrive version here.
Maybe I'm expecting too much. Over a decade ago, PGA Tour was the perfect cartridge to bang into your Sega machine when your thumbs bled from too much Speedball 2 or Street's of Rage. It had everything a golf game should have; presentation, playability and a sense of relaxation. Since then, the baton has passed from title to title, with even the poorer titles being quite a laugh with a group of mates on a rainy afternoon. Microprose Golf, the Tiger Woods titles, Actua Golf, Mario Golf; these titles all had what it takes. International Golf Pro has none of these things.
International Golf Pro has three modes of play; Quick Round, Match Play and Championship. With an auspicious lack of career mode (and therefore an immediately limited one player lifespan) I picked Quick Round. I then picked one of a handful of uninspiring and dull looking golfers and then choose one of the three similar looking courses. No create-your-own-golfer mode? No more than three courses? Of course not, things weren't looking good.
When my chosen player finally got his clubs out and started swinging, it soon became obvious that International Golf Pro is nothing short of a collection of bad Golf game clichés. The landscapes are bland and blocky, the trees are a bit repetitive and the bunkers are a little too square-edged for my liking. All this can be overlooked if the shot interface has been implemented well but, naturally, it hasn’t. The problems with International Golf Pro are fundamental.
Problem number one is the shot gauge; it’s just too darn unresponsive. You have to learn to guess when to hit the shot button, early each time, which I think kind of misses the point of a shot gauge. Such a device is traditionally employed in Golf games (and Tennis games, and soccer games, etc) for you to gauge power. In International Golf Pro, you have to gauge the response time of the control interface first in order to hit the recommended level. That makes the game all about battling with the controls to hit the line in the gauge which corresponds to your chosen club, not about judging for yourself how much power you need. Oxygen’s plan was probably to make the shot gauge move like lightning because, at the end of the day, that’s the only real ‘skill’ element in the game. The repercussions of this are that when the power bar makes it’s return journey round the gauge to the start, where you traditionally have to hit the button again to prevent slicing, it’s going far too fast to accurately time it. That made me annoyed and just a little tense, ruining the relaxation aspect of the game immediately.
Problem number two is this; there is no backspin option. Call me crazy, but on many occasions in golf hitting the ball high, slightly further than you need to, but with a lot of backspin, can work wonders. In a bunker, need power, don’t want to hit it forever? Power chip and backspin, surely. No, not in International Golf Pro.
You know what? I’ve had enough of this. International Golf Pro is a bland golf game that looks cheap. International Golf Pro is a game that plays cheap. International Golf Pro is a golf game that’s not much fun in multiplayer, mainly for the two big old problems I defined earlier. That makes it cheap. Remember, we’re talking about International Golf Pro here.
International Golf Pro is only £14.99 at retail, but International Golf Pro isn’t worth even that. If I were you I’d go out and buy a second-hand copy of one of the Tiger Woods games. Hell, I’d even recommend you spend the cash on a Megadrive and a copy of PGA, which you could probably pick up on eBay for that much and you’d have more fun, trust me. Anything would be a wiser purchase than International Golf Pro.
So that’s it, I’m off now, that’s if anyone is reading this review anymore anyway, because I know I wouldn’t be. Why would anyone bother reading a whole review about a third rate Golf game? Not me, and I hope my editor isn’t otherwise he’ll work out how many times I’ve used the full title of International Golf Pro just to pad the review out. Oh, and just for the record guys, when you grow up you never stop sniffing around the dangerous chicks.
Now, where’s my Megadrive, I fancy a bash on Speedball 2…
International Golf Pro
PS2 review by Jim Smith - Friday 21st May 2004
Thunderbolt score: three out of ten
Online: No
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