NYC Urban Golf
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| NYC Urban Golf

Golf isn't urban. Ian Woosnam isn't from the mean streets. Phil Mickelson didn't have to choose between the putter and the pistol during his teenage years. And Colin Montgomerie has never popped a cap in anybody's ass. Not even a journalist's.

Nevertheless, urban golf is apparently a thriving sport, with thousands of people hacking tennis balls around city streets. And now I-play has made a game about it.

The basic idea is obviously similar to golf. You play a round over nine 'holes', except the holes are replaced by everyday items: bins, street-signs, police cars... You have to hit the said object in as few shots as possible, while clonking as many other things on the way for style's sake.

It sounds fun. Unfortunately, the game itself isn't. Sure, it's a breath of fresh air in the mobile golfing world, where games tend to strive for realism. But the gameplay mechanics are often frustrating, leaving you wanting to drive your handset over the nearest building, which is hardly the idea.

Let's start with the basics, though. You can learn the ropes with a tutorial, jump in with a Quick Play match, or take on a series of opponents in the Tournament mode, which sees you competing for turf via the medium of golf. (I can't help thinking that in the real world of turf wars, sore losers would regularly resort to more violent means: "Nice putt old boy, now meet my Glock.")

The graphics are okay, viewed from a top-down perspective. You can choose between a driver, wedge and putter, with slice and hook options for the craftiest strokeplay. The system doesn't work that well though – you switch between a view mode to scroll around the city, and an aim mode to target your shot. But the two are separate, so you have to switch to View to see where your shot will land, then switch back to Aim to tweak the direction, then View again to check it. It's a bit fiddly.

Hitting the targets can be frustrating too, especially when they're mounted on a wall. Getting the power wrong and seeing your shot disappear over the building is, for reasons we can't quite explain, even more tooth-grindingly annoying than hitting into the water in a normal golf game.

Another thing that jars is the dialogue, in the same way it does in THQ Wireless' Saints Row. The problem is that gangsta dialogues look ridiculous when written down. So whereas a console game like Grand Theft Auto gets away with it because it's spoken by voice-actors, mobile games just look silly. Especially when they're to do with golf.

Also, I-play have tried a bit too hard to make the game realistic. Every so often, a car pootles along the road, and if you're standing in its way you get flattened. Needless to say, this is incredibly irritating. I don't care if it's realistic: if they wanted to put a time limit on shots, I'd rather have seen a countdown on-screen.

NYC Urban Golf isn't rubbish, despite the tone of much of this review. It's a decent enough game, and if you're a casual golf fan it provides plenty of challenge. We especially like the Mayhem scoring system too, where you get extra points for hitting objects on your way to the 'hole'. But despite its promising theme, the game ends up being – wait for it – a bit below par.

NYC Urban Golf

Despite the promising New York setting, it's not exactly streets ahead of conventional golf games
Score
Stuart Dredge
Stuart Dredge
Stuart is a freelance journalist and blogger who's been getting paid to write stuff since 1998. In that time, he's focused on topics ranging from Sega's Dreamcast console to robots. That's what you call versatility. (Or a short attention span.)