Golf

The Good
The game has two screens, one showing the course and the direction your aiming at on a map with arrows (I call it the "radar") and one that actually shows the man you play as in nice 8-bit graphics. This allows the game to both look good and provide enough information at the same time because looking at the sportsman is not really a good way to figure out how to hit the ball and looking at the map is rather boring if that's the only thing you do.

I can see a million ways a game about golf on a system with only two buttons could have gone horribly wrong, but to my surprise the game controls rather easily. Once you positioned yourself properly using the radar, you press a button to start a little quick time event that determines how hard you hit the ball. The radar then shows how the ball flies and then you repeat the action on the next locations.

The game has a wide variety of different areas to play in, so you don't just repeat the same stage over and over again, but actually go from hole to hole. There are also stages with water in it and of course there are the bunkers. As far as realism goes on the NES, it's pretty damn impressive to see a golf game that reminds so much of the real thing. It's also sweet that it doesn't go too far and loses the NES's trademark, colorful fun-factor.

The Bad
There is no description that goes with all the different clubs you can use, so I always had to guess which one suited which situation the best. Quite often I found myself having to put, but accidentally launching the ball into outer space with an insanely overpowered club that would have helped me a lot at the start of that course. I am too lazy to remember all the names of all the clubs and I shouldn't have to in the first place.

There is really nothing too special about the game and that makes it both rather simple and hard to review, you are just sitting there hoping for the game to throw something interesting at you, but it never happens. The game is just about playing golf, nothing more, nothing less. There is no tournament to partake in, no characters to unlock and no insane bad guys to defeat. Imagine Punch-Out!! without the crazy opponents and story that reminds of the first Rocky movie.

The Bottom Line
There is not much you can say about Golf besides: "it's golf". If you like the Nintendo Entertainment System and you like playing golf, then I can recommend getting this game, but if you don't have the system or don't care about the sport, there is no reason for you to bother with this. I should probably warn you that there are better golf games on the modern systems nowadays, so a real golf fan will have a much better time by buying the latest Tiger Woods game.