Outlaw Golf 2 – Review

Who stated that golf is a boring and snobby game? With Outlaw Golf 2 you can forget about the old preconceptions and have lots of fun while simply hitting a golf ball on a grass field. There’s no dress code and everybody is accepted to step onto the green and make the best of it. So why don’t you give it a shot?

While starting the game it really doesn’t look like a traditional golf simulator as you see animations of the characters showing themselves of with a stick. It looks a bit naughty and as you are focusing on the girls, it could take a while before you notice that they’re playing with a golf stick. But all available characters drop by to present themselves in their own way, even the boys. All characters are impressively designed; ridiculous styled, have lots of humor, individual attitudes and golfing experience. From stupid hill-billies to hot chicks, from Mister Macho to motorcycle mama, as soon as you see one of those you’ll get a big smile on your face as they’re funny to look at without seeing them in action, yet. And to make it even better, each character has its own caddie in the same style. For example if you choose to play with Summer, you get Autumn for free to help you out with motivation and massages after hitting 18 holes. From a slap to the butt to a dirty dance, all is included with these two girls. Every character has its own golf quality which means that somebody is capable of smashing the ball hundreds of miles away while another character is better at putting. Due to the differences in characters it won’t be a boring golf game!

Like Britney Spears sang “in the zone” (me against the music) you need to make sure to get in the zone. No it’s not a twilight zone, ok maybe if you’re really bad at golfing. No the zone means that you are performing very well and hardly make any mistakes like hitting the ball out of the course or hitting right besides the green instead on the green. Your progress is measured and if you perform in a very good way the zone status bar will turn to green. If you’re playing an excellent game of golf you’ll get in the zone which increases your mental health and your skills. The opposite site of being in the zone is being in the gutter which result in worse skills. That’s bad but the game includes some funny mini-games to increase the zone status bar by beating up your caddy or by racing with a golf cart over the course in a kind of check point race game. The more you beat up your caddy or race like Michael Schumacher over the grass, the more the status bar turns green and finally make it into the zone!

Okay, let’s forget about the crazy characters and the zone status bar. Let’s focus on the gameplay of this humorous golf game. As I’m used to play Tiger Woods PGA Tour this game should be pretty easy, I thought. But I was wrong. Okay, I didn’t have to chose between the different kind of golf sticks and the wind hardly plays part, but I had to get used to the game play. But it turned out to be very simple; check out where you want the ball to land, start the hitting status bar and stop it at the right moment to hit and get the ball where you want it to be. To make things easier you can use per turn a ghost ball animation which shows you where the ball Is going to land. If it’s not suitable you can always change the hitting direction but after using the ghost ball you’re not allowed to check it out again. Anyway, the hitting wasn’t a problem, but being on the green and needed to put, I could rip out my hair. Come on, it cannot be that difficult. Well, maybe not. Equal to the ghost ball you’ll have three previews on the green to put the ball in the hole. But in my case and especially in the beginning the developers better had included five to ten previews. Learning by doing. The controller handling is easy and totally not complicated. Swing the analogue stick back to lift the golf stick and push it back forwards to hit the ball. The other buttons can be used to change the camera, to preview the ball’s behavior and to do a fast forwarding if you want to speed up the game.

As this isn’t an ordinary golf simulator, be prepared to play on some strange looking courses with extra difficulty features. A monorail above the course, airplanes flying really low, animals on the course and even UFO’s drop by to make things more complicated and funnier! Eight courses in total are available to play on which include three newly designed courses returning from the original game plus five brand new environments. Each course has its own theme which you’re going to experience in Tour mode. This is the leading feature in the game and the most ‘serious’ one. Choose one from several no skilled characters and golf your way up to the top. While winning courses you unlock new golf stick materials, outfits and new challenges. Some courses needs to be played by a certain specific character which can be different from the chosen one. Good contribution to game variety and in the meantime you skill the other characters as well. Besides the tour mode you can play Exhibition mode (training) and Outlaw Range (missions) and several mini-games to improve your skills and to unlock even more items. if you want to play against real gamers, your wish has been granted. Not only can it be played on Xbox Live but also the Playstation 2 has an online mode.

The game contains seventeen different music tracks, including five bonus tracks which you need to unlock. All sorts of music styles are available and in the options menu you can choose the songs which you like which is quite tough. Why? Because you only see the title but hear no music and they used no common pop songs. So which one to choose to hear? I didn’t choose anything and just let the game play its music from hardrock to funky beats. Quite a variety of music styles but again no recognizable music from MTV for example. So no Britney Spears singing with Madonna “get in the zone” which would have fit perfectly to this game.

Regarding sound and being optimistic, I can only come up with one thing; the comments during the game and animations of the commentator or the characters. It’s not the sound actually, it’s what comes out of their mouths. The phrases used are hilarious but after playing for a while, these will be used over and over again unfortunately.
People with hearing disabilities can play this game as any other although the spoken words won’t be subtitled. The controlling of the game is visualized before a game mode starts and describes the buttons’ functionality. Also if you’re standing on the green ready to finally put the ball, the triangle button is on screen visualized which can be used to see where the ball leads to.

A lot of playable female characters turn boring golf into a rowdy and tasteless display of great fun. Maybe to some female gamers they look quite overdone, too sexy but it’s the humor in the game. I started of playing with Summer and her caddy Autumn and believe me these girls are hot and naughty while Autumn is slapping Summers’ butt and reading instructions on how to do a lap dance. Also you can customize the characters clothing if it doesn’t suite the way they look, but it’s not possible to cover all the body parts and a bikini top is a must. If you find these girls offensive and don’t like the humor based around them, let this be a relief; the boys are designed and styled the same way. For example the girls boobs wiggle extremely like water balloons with “aftershocks/ wiggles” but the boys beer belly behaves the same!

To round this up my end conclusion is that gamers without humor are doomed with this game. They’ll probably won’t appreciate this type of golf game as it isn’t that realistic plus sexually overloaded. Too bad for them as the humorous gamers shall appreciate another type of golf, sport game. For them it’s also a good way to get introduced to the golf sport in funny way if they weren’t used to golf games like Tiger Woods PGA Tour for example. The difficulty level is rather low after you have figured out how to get “in the zone” status and how to put the ball by using different camera angles to predict the ball runway. The beating of the caddies and racing around with the golf carts is a fun interaction and distraction of the original golf play. Besides the humor and the many game modes, the choice of characters is huge which is a big plus! But again if you don’t have any humor, you won’t appreciate any of them or even this game!

Review by Wencke
Thumb Bandits European Correspondent & manager of GGU.

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