Crazy Golf: World Tour – Review

The words “Crazy” and “Golf” are two words that, when put together, should be synonymous with fun. It’s the very idea of smacking a ball toward the green via impossibly small holes in a clown’s head whilst a gigantic windmill obstructs the target; or making your ball hit a ramp and jump across a sea of fire before it gets caught in the mouths of mechanized dolphins—surely these are the main appeals of ‘crazy golf’. It’s these feats of incredible daring and luck that bring out all the joy and excitement of the game. Sadly, for Oxygen Interactive and Liquid Games, such elements are completely absent from Crazy Golf: World Tour, instead you’re left with a game that feels hollow and unfulfilling.

Crazy Golf: World Tour has a few basic game types; you can duke it out in Career mode, in Multiplayer with a friend, or in Practice mode. In Career mode you tour the world trying to get as many pars as possible to progress through the game and unlock different courses and characters. Aside from the somewhat flat games themselves, the Career mode also suffers from feeling rather two-dimensional, which makes it feel more like a repetitive chore than an enjoyable videogame.

Crazy Golf: World Tour completely lacks even a whiff of female presence, which is lamentable seeing as females—believe it or not—are fully capable of hitting a small ball into a hole just as well their male counterparts. Plus, regardless of this being a ‘crazy’ golf title, the female professional golf game is positively thriving thanks to the likes of Annika Sörenstam and Michelle Wei. How hard would it have been to design and bundle a few representative female players?

Apart from the lack of a female angle, Crazy Golf: World Tour also suffers immensely due to its very poor and ludicrously sensitive control system. Truly it cannot be emphasized just how painfully annoying it is to repeatedly hit a ball ‘out of bounds’ due to an overly precise control system. The system is, in itself, reminiscent of Tiger Woods PGA Tour, except it’s the opposite analogue stick that controls power distribution. The drawing back of the club and striking of the ball is incredibly sensitive, but instead of this advanced sensitivity proving beneficial, it’s more of a complete pain because it seems nigh impossible to hit the ball how you intended, which leaves the whole game feeling like a strain. The other aspects of the gameplay that should have received more defined attention, such as aiming accurately and applying spin to the ball, are completely absent elements that could have added more depth to this brittle husk of a videogame.

Graphically, Crazy Golf: World Tour is perhaps comparable to some of the PSOne’s best titles. For a supposedly ‘new’ game this is unforgivable. The texturing is basic at best, and the developers should have asserted extra care in making the game more visually exciting; as it is, Crazy Golf: World Tour has zero visual appeal—to the point where watching a magnolia wall would be just a bit more exciting. The ‘crazy golf’ courses in the game are, in a word, lame. The courses tend to be more about avoiding the moving bit of wood and hitting a ball round the corner than anything that remotely approaches fun. The game’s audio is also so lackluster that deaf gamers will not miss anything, in fact its preferable to play the game without audio.

Crazy Golf: World Tour emerges as about as ‘crazy’ as a beige Christmas jumper, when it had the potential to be as genuinely ‘crazy’ as Murdoch from the A-Team. A ridiculously sensitive power system, completely vacant gameplay, absent female players, poor graphics, and flat sound leave this game feeling like an empty concept that was never fully realized. Crazy Golf: World Tour may well be aimed at slightly younger gamers, but my advice to curious parents and gaming veterans alike is to avoid this title and buy a golf game that has some substance.

Review by Nige