When it comes to sports games, I am lukewarm. Sure I played Rugby League Live for dozens of hours on end, but that was to scale down the difficulty and see my teams not suck for a hot minute. WHAT THE GOLF? isn’t the sports game for fans of sports games, it’s for someone wanting to take the piss out of golf, and boy does it nail that.
When you first start playing WHAT THE GOLF?, it feels like a simple golf game…for two or three minutes. After hitting the ball into the flag on a course, you line up your next shot and as you release the swing, your golfer goes flying instead. Then before you know it you need to get a hole in one by hitting the ball into a massive one shaped hole. All seems nice and silly right? Well it continues to go off the rails.
The golf goes out the window as you start trying to get a football in a goal, or try to fly a TV set to knock over trees, and eventually even some glorified 2D platforming. Then comes the levels based on SUPERHOT, Super Meat Boy and Portal. At this stage it is clear what this game is, a fun puzzler loosely based around sports with some terrible puns, which are terrible in the best possible way.
It is important that I don’t touch much more on the gameplay or level structures. This is because the majority of the joy from this game is based around discovering these as the game presents them to you. Generally gameplay is aiming and powering shots which is simple, but you’re here for the silliness and puzzles, so simple functional gameplay is all the game needs.
The thin story is you are making your way through a lab as the experiments are trying to make golf a less boring sport. By all means they nailed it, and it turns out the way to fix golf, is to get rid of that golf bit. Well that and introduce spikes, portals, and have some inexplicable love of hitting cats with balls.
Then there is the local multiplayer. Which is essentially the same as the single player in that it consists of levels that are as silly as the rest, but that physics based puzzling, mixed with the time trial element of beating your friends is just so much fun.
There isn’t too much more to say about WHAT THE GOLF?. It is a super fun physics based puzzle game that balances simple and challenging puzzles, with enough variety to keep you playing for hours. I can’t recommend checking this gem out more and don’t want to risk spoiling the fun for you, but it is safe to say that Triband has fixed golf.
Your move PGA Tour.
- Criteria
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