Golf is considerably different than other sports. It doesn't have the high impact thrills of football, nor does it feature the competitive back-and-forth mechanics of basketball. It is a one-man show, a game defined by skill, strategy and patience, and as such it's also a sporting genre that has always made the transition to videogames very well. Over the years there have been countless golf titles - some flawed, some good and some great, but few that could be called the true Madden of golf with any validity.
Leave it to publisher, though, to change that. Enter for GameCube.
The title, developed internally at EA, wraps real and fantasy courses and pro golfers, a wide selection of mini-games and challenges, plus more, around what has to be the most solid gameplay mechanics and 3D engine yet seen in a console golf game. The franchise still isn't quite perfect - there are a couple of omissions and oversights that we'd have preferred were addressed - but it's easily and without doubt the best golf videogame experience in years, and one deserving to be thought of in the same light that Madden is to football. Just one of the atmospheric courses in the game Of course, there are other control attributes that complete the configuration, all of them designed to offer gamers a deep, engaging experience without breaking from the recreation. When in the long, A button raises the camera to different views of the course, B switches stroke style (flop, full, punch, approach), R and L cycle clubs, and X makes the camera trace where the ball might land when hit Players will notice that there are no measurement grids when putting, few line of sights to holes - no real cheats.
Instead, gamers must observe; look at the environment around them, hit away from obtrusive objects, and knock balls in based, for the most part, on their own calculations. It's very simulation-like in that respect, and it works remarkably well. Also, there is a heightened sense of satisfaction gained having sunk a hole almost entirely on one's own. That's not to say that there are no hints - the distance of each shot is still calculated by the CPU, and a marker still shows gamers the general area of where there ball may land when hit with the different clubs. But the information isn't overbearing. And that's refreshing.