I'm one of those people who, while not being much of a golf fan, will happily whip out an electronic approximation on a lazy Sunday afternoon for an hour or two of gentle swinging.
My particular preference is for the Japanese variety - you know, the ones that possess quirky super-deformed characters, exaggerated physics and supremely accessible gameplay. Think
Mario Golf or, more pertinently,
Everybody's Golf.
If you haven't played it before, you might recall reading about the
Everybody's Golf series on this very website. The PSP has played host to two versions (the first of which we reviewed under its American title,
Hot Shots Golf) both of which feature brilliantly accessible club-play while managing to retain a considerable level of depth.
Now Living Mobile has been given the license to bring the series to mobile, and we've been granted an exclusive hands on preview with an early build.
Going straight into a Training game (there's also Tournament and Challenge play on offer), there are four courses to choose from, although three of them need to be unlocked.
Having selected the course, it's onto the series' recognisable character select screen. There are three golfers to choose from, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, although as with the courses there's only the one available from the start.
A glance down reveals another feature that will be familiar to fans - the club and ball selection bars. By accessing the game's Shop, you can spend the currency you earn from playing on new equipment, which then becomes selectable from the aforementioned screen.
Unlike in real life, buying a swanky new club really does make a difference to your play, enabling you to add some vicious swerve to your shots or an extra kick to your drive.
Onto the action itself, and the game retains the series' famously functional three button-push swing system - one press to start a power bar rising, another to set the appropriate pace and a final press to establish the accuracy.
This final push must be timed so that the bar stops within a set area, which itself varies in size depending on your golfer's abilities and the environment you're swinging in (a bunker shot will be tougher than a tee-off shot, for example).
This is all done from a close-up, nicely detailed view of your golfer, but prior to this you'll get to set your direction and change your club (although this isn't compulsory) from a zoomed out, birds-eye perspective.
Once you've driven and chipped your way to the green you're introduced to a simplified putting system, where you need only set the power and direction.
The skill here comes from reading the lie of the land, making adjustments depending on the topography of the area between the ball and the hole. This is shown by a handy set of moving arrows, although our initial impression was that the putting greens are far less severe than in previous versions.
Which makes perfect sense when you consider the technical limitations of the platform, as well as the rather more casual audience Living Mobile is catering for.
Simplification and streamlining looks to be the name of the game with
Everybody's Golf Mobile, but the developer appears to have kept most of the series' signature elements.
We'll have wait until we can spend some time with the final build to see if they've managed to retain that all important depth.
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