915th played so far

Genre: Sports
Platform: Playstation 3
Year of Release: 2007
Developer: Clap Hanz
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment

Out of the golf games on the list, this one probably just escaped my notice most. Mario Golf ties into the full Mario sports franchise, while Golden Tee Live stood out most as one I rushed around several bars and places to find an arcade version before settling for a home version. There have been a few more games on the serious end, but while Everybody’s Golf: World Tour has been in my vision for a while, it sat in between everything else, and without motion control or other gimmicks.

Instead, I’m just expecting a decent golf game… although with the Tiger Woods PGA Tour offerings, I’m not sure it will manage to appeal.

Our Thoughts

While Everybody’s Golf 5 plays a lot like standard golf games, its controls are just different enough to be more interesting and useful. You can pretty accurately use the character animation to determine the strength of your hit, which works a lot better than looking at a bar, and on the whole it feels that much more intuitive. There are the aim and club set up options, but it feels like the whole game plays a lot quicker than other golf games – the controls promote it, but also the pacing and movement of the game is better. Shots get resolved quicker, your approaches are, it just feels a bit better and cleaner and from that it becomes more addicting. I played better than I would in other games, which feels like an improvement in it.

What helps is that the game looks quite fun. It’s a somewhat stylized art style, but it’s one that has a lot of character in them – your golfers are not all interchangable, but feel different, and they are quite good with the slight anime style of those looks. The comments and vocals, which are quite encouraging from the caddy I got to used, help as well.

Following that, I must admit the game touches the right areas to encourage you to keep coming back to it. There are several missions on each course – individual runs, in a group or against a specific opponent, with their own differences in scoring. These then unlock various cosmetics, new golf equipment and such, some of which has more of an in game effect, but all of which creates a nice bit of variety and extra thing to keep going for.

Final Thoughts

Everybody’s Golf 5: World Tour feels like it deserves to be the last covered here, as I believe it might be the best golf game out there – it looks good, is accessible but also leads to a decent amount of challenge. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, but you can feel the real challenge is there. Out of the list, this is the one I’m most likely to get back to.