Flick Golf Extreme!

If the most striking memory you have of 2007’s I Am Legend was that bit where Will Smith shoots golf balls off an aircraft carrier, then Flick Golf Extreme! would like a word with you.

Played out over a series of five slightly strange locations, the game takes the original Flick Golf!’s mechanics and transplants them onto the top of a skyscraper, the canals of Venice, and - yes - an aircraft carrier, in order to inject a bit more excitement into smacking a ball with a stick.

It’s window dressing, of course, but it does at least give fans of the original game a reason to pick this title over the horde of other games shuffling around in the App Store darkness.

The aim remains the same - hit a golf ball into the hole using just your flicking skills and your ability to spin the ball before it bounces three times. The closer the ball lands, the more you score.

The setup should be instantly familiar to anyone who’s played Pik Pok’s Flick Kick series, although here the emphasis is more on what happens after the flick.

Should you manage to hole three shots in a row, your ball is set on fire, allowing you to accumulate some ‘extreme’ bonus points if you manage to settle it inside the little divot in the green.

There are three modes to play through this time around, with World Tour acting as a single-player ‘campaign’ of sorts (earn medals to unlock the next course), with the pin and wind increasing in distance and strength respectively every three holes.

Meanwhile, Quickshot adds a time limit to proceedings - not that gripping, but fun for online leaderboards - while the tough new 5 Ball Challenge involves earning extra balls by hitting holes.

The game is certainly livened up by the various settings you’ll be playing in.

While it may have fewer locations than the (updated) original, shooting from a moving helicopter or blasting the ball across a windy oil rig is arguably more fun than watching it sail past the rolling hillside all the time.

Spinning Jenny

But there’s still that nagging imbalance between flicking and stroking (to spin) that means Flick Golf Extreme will never quite grip you in the same way as, say, Flick Kick Football.

This is partly because the scoring is designed so that the less accurate you are off the tee the more points you’ll earn should you spin the ball into the hole.

You could alternatively try and land a perfect shot straight in the hole, but the difference between too hard and too soft is all but negligible and will prove frustratingly obtuse for most.

The other problem is that it’s just too hard to know exactly where your ball’s going to land in the first place. The camera is positioned in a way that shows off the great incidental graphics, but when it comes to highlighting the ball’s shadow it’s less effective.

Nevertheless, Flick Golf Extreme is a fun extension to the best-selling original. It may not go down in App Store history books as a legend, but the original had a solid enough foundation to provide a good second round.