Game Reviews

Golf Zero review - Who'd have thought that golf could be this interesting?

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iOS
| Golf Zero
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Golf Zero review - Who'd have thought that golf could be this interesting?
|
iOS
| Golf Zero

If you ask me, there are a number of things that golf has been missing. One of them is spinning circular saws. Another is the ability to slow down time while you're plummeting to your death in order to pull off the perfect shot.

Luckily Golf Zero is here to correct those problems. It's like golf mixed with Super Meat Boy and Max Payne. But somehow better than that sounds.

Dart around cartoon levels wall-sliding, thwacking balls, and groaning as your perfectly placed shot stops just short of the hole.

Fore sure

To all intents and purposes Golf Zero is a slightly floaty hardcore platformer. You make your way through small levels, jumping across chasms, dodging sharp things, and trying to stay alive as best you can.

The only difference is, rather than reaching the end of a challenge alive, here you need to twonk a small ball into a hole to succeed.

And that's much easier said than done. You tap a button to start your golf swing, and everything slows down. Tap the left and right buttons to aim your shot, then the club button again to smack the ball.

You've got three seconds of slow down to line up your shot. To start with that's ample time, but as things get more difficult you're shooting off putts and drives left right and centre.

To get the best score on a level you don't just need to insert ball in hole, you also need to pop a balloon. And some levels have restrictions on the number of balls you can use to achieve that.

But when time slows down and you're angling your shots, you can't help but feel like Nick Faldo. Well, if Nick Faldo was caught in some temporal wormhole and magically became interesting and yellow at the same time.

There's a strong challenge here, whether you're playing through the campaign or tackling the super sharp speed run levels. But thanks to all the glorious nonsense, you'll still be smiling when you die for the nth time.

And the speed at which you can jump back into the action means there's hardly any dowtime. Which is a dangerous combination if you don't want to end up spending hours in Golf Zero's mad cap links.

Nine iron

Golf Zero is a beautiful mix of ideas that splodge together to create an incredibly playable and entertaining mobile experience.

It's bright, it's brash, and it's almost guaranteed to leave you with a big ol' smile on your face. Even if you're a normal person who hates golf, you're going to love this.

Golf Zero review - Who'd have thought that golf could be this interesting?

A brilliant, sometimes maddening mix of a boring sport and a brilliant concept. Just go and play it, yeah?
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.