Mario Golf is a golf game for the Nintendo 64, and the first game in the Mario sports series developed by Camelot (one of my personal favorite studios). Anyone who has read this blog or spent any time with me at all knows my love of the Mario sports games, and my particular love of the Mario golf games, so it may come as a surprise to some that I'd actually played this entry surprisingly little before tackling it these last few weeks. I had a cousin who had this game, and he would soundly trounce me in it, but that's about all of my exposure to this game. I played Toadstool Tour religiously, absolutely adored the GBA entry, and liked the 3DS one. We desperately need a Switch Mario golf game, by the way.
Anyway, this is just a flat out excellent game. You have a big cast of characters. It still looks nice today, although it's nothing compared to the absolutely gorgeous Toadstool Tour. You get six full 18 hole courses with a wide range of creative hole and course design. All of the staples of Mario golf are here. You have match play, stroke play, multiplayer, Ring attack, time attack, clubs slots, tournament mode, challenging AI characters, etc. The golf mechanics are really sound here, although they definitely get polished up and are more reliable in Toadstool Tour.
The soundtrack is really great. It sounded so familiar to me that I had to look up the composer, and lo and behold, just like I thought, it's the same guy who composed the soundtrack to the Golden Sun games, which are magnificent, by the way. It's not too surprising, given that Camelot makes both series, but it's nice to hear a familiar musical voice.
About the only critique I have to offer here is that Toadstool Tour does everything a little better. But they created this 3D Mario golf experience out of whole cloth for this game, and it really does work about 90% as well as Toadstool Tour. This was, without question, a must own title for the 64 when it was released. But I really don't see myself revisiting this game again, given that I have a copy of Toadstool Tour to enjoy, as well as the GBA and 3DS games for some great handheld options (GBA for the RPG mode, and 3DS for raw golf gameplay prowess). I'll give Mario Golf a 9.0, but if you have a Gamecube, just get Toadstool Tour. It will satisfy every Mario golf need you have.
Up next on What I'm Playing is a title I picked up on the cheap last month, and I'm almost done with it. I'll almost certainly have a review up next week for this one. Here's teaser:
-TRO
No comments:
Post a Comment