Sid Meier's SimGolf

The Good
Golf is an interesting game. Then again, so is the Sims. So mix the two together and you have on strange game indeed. I liked the idea of building your own golf course and then watching players and fans turn out to play on it. I came up with some funny looking courses, and I always found myself laughing as the Sims made a mockery of themselves while playing on it. And the addition of the managerial side of things brings me back to the days of Sim City, although not in such great a detail.

The Bad
I suppose the same thing that hurts Sim City and The Sims can be said here. Once you play it, you may not want to play it again.

The Bottom Line
Credit to Sid Meier for trying something different in the Sims world. Personally, I would have preferred something in the Mini Golf world. Watching the Sims go around a carnival like atmosphere, much like the Theme Park series, is much more fun then watching them play serious golf (or at least try to play serious golf). It isn't the best Sim game ever made, but its worth trying for a while at least.

The Good
Ever since I played the near-black and white "Pebble Beach Golf" on my old 386 I've been really wanting a game which lets me create my own golf course. Well...Sim Golf isn't exactly what I was looking for, but it comes close.

That is the premise behind Sim Golf, if the title didn't clue you in. Your task in Sim Golf is to build and manage a golf course, managing your funds and the well-being of the course and the golfers within it. You'll have to hire security to keep those pesky kids from running amok, and hire groundskeepers to keep those blasted dandelions out of your fairways. You'll also have to build additional components into your course, like a cart garage or a putting green, to increase popularity and growth. And a single course won't hold up for long. Who wants to drive all the way to the golf course just to play the same hole over and over? You'll have to expand, but of course, that's most of the fun!

You're able to design the courses from a top-down view, similar to, say, Sim City. Only instead of planting residential zones, you're placing the fairway, adding a sand trap, putting down trees and raising/lowering the terrain. You can make some very easy courses, some wild and crazy holes or just make that impossible nail-biting one that'll piss everyone off.

And an extra feature in the game, which comes into play later in the game, you can create your own custom golfer to play your own course! Compete in tournaments in your own grounds and see if you can beat the best golfers around.

The Bad
Like most games in the "Sim..." series, once you've played it through once, there's not a lot of replay value. I mean, it was fun to make my award-winning eighteen-hole golf course...but I don't really want to go do it again.

You can create some truly creative holes in your course, but the reaction of those who play the course might annoy you. There's a thin line between having a "creative" course and having a "bad" course. The AI is sort of smart, usually. They'll usually know where to hit the ball so they can avoid the sand/water trap. But sometimes they don't. Sometimes the trap is right in front of them and they get annoyed after they hit the ball into it three times in a row (and then walk away and get rid of their membership).

They used that annoying way of "talking" from The Sims. They didn't even make new ones, they just recycled the old ones. Maybe some people like hearing "Jumba joo shuaw? Debbie doo ma call an shnibble!" every five seconds, but I couldn't stand it in The Sims, and I can't stand it in Sim Golf.

The Bottom Line
Well, I did enjoy this game, but it became boring once you've done everything there was to do. And it can be aggrivating when the golfers don't appreciate the true creative genius of your 900 yard downhill wilderness par 8 hole.

The Good
The concept, really, is excellent; designing AND running a golf course. It's generally pleasingly executed, too.

The Bad
Frankly, there just isn't a lot of game here; it's very shallow, more of a child's product. Designing and managing the courses, even at higher difficulty levels, is very, very easy, and beyond designing the holes there just isn't a whole lot to do. The tournament function is neat but easy to win. There is no financial management of any kind except designing good holes. The structures available for placement are very limited in number and scope and once placed are totally beyond the player's control. Sadly, SimGolf has almost no replay value; once you've mastered the art of making an imaginative hole, the game's more or less over.

The graphics are not up to 2002 standards. Frankly, I don't much care about graphics if the underlying GAME is good, but the underlying game here is not good; these graphics look as if the game was designed seven years ago.

The Bottom Line
It's a fun game but not really a full-blown gaming product you should pay $40 for. Wait until it's a $9.99 bargain bin purchase.