This course ain’t big enough for the two of us… Review

This course ain’t big enough for the two of us…

As a GR reviewer (and, by default, a person of the highest moral integrity), I

get lots of hate mail. Usually the mail comes from one of two camps: the L337

Camp or the Wrestling Camp. L337 flames are usually in response to my lambasting

some exceptionally geeky game, and often go something like “Dud, Ill r0x0r yur

MoM, biznitch! U sux0r!” Wrestling game fans, on the other hand, send hate-mail

to anybody who’s reviewed any game they’ve ever played, usually saying something

like “Bonker Jerks is awesome you suck &%*%$# you stupid monkey *#%$&!!!”

Before

I actually played Simon & Schuster’s arcade Outlaw Golf, I assumed I’d

get all sorts of mail from wrestling game fans once I wrote the review. But

having played Outlaw Golf, I’m not really worried anymore, as I doubt

most wrestling game fans will be able to figure out this surprisingly technical

game, what with their teeny brains and lack of opposable thumbs. [And you

wonder why you get hate mail. – Ed.]

Outlaw Golf is very much in the vein of arcade golf titles like Hot

Shots Golf. There are a few ways to play: Tournament Mode, Exhibition matches,

or you can hit the range to gain better stats for your players. The Exhibitions

are more entertaining as they offer more variety than the Tournament; for instance,

you can play a Skins match or try to finish holes in as little time as possible.

Unfortunately, the fact that there are only three courses, none of which particularly

rock, negates the coolness of the myriad of Exhibition matches. It’s also inexcusable

in this day and age to only offer three courses.

Outlaw Golf takes golf from the beautiful deserts of Arizona (rife with

players of nobility and money) and sets it in cultural armpits like Fresno or

Stockton. The players are constellations of white-trash culture, also known

as horrible racist/sexist stereotypes. You’ve got your biker-dyke, your Latin

American lover, your Asian dominatrix with fat S&M side-kick, and a porn star,

who is, of course, a lesbian.

I guess this gives the game its ‘attitude’, but frankly, I would gladly trade

attitude for gameplay any day of the week. Maybe they should have worried more

about the courses and less about the lesbians.

Outlaw Golf uses a control scheme that allocates shot placement to

the left analog stick and swinging to the right stick. Pulling back on the right

stick charges a little meter (0 to 100% power) and pressing forward swings with

whatever might was charged up. This system works well – if you charge up too

much, the power meter gradually recedes, giving you time to press forward at

just the right moment.

The control includes classic arcade golf features like putting spin on the

ball. This is a very nice feature and makes Outlaw Golf playable on a

finer level than you would think possible for a game in which you regularly

pimp-slap your caddy while calling her things like a “slut” and a “republican.”

Putting is handled similarly, except for a few extra camera angles and a nifty

putt preview. There’s a movable target on the green that supposedly indicates

where the ball will go. But in reality, it doesn’t represent any such thing,

which is why putting in Outlaw Golf is completely counterintuitive. Moving

the cursor left to right affects the path of the ball and moving it closer and

farther affects the hypothetical power you’re about to hit the ball with. Pressing

‘X’ gives you a preview of what the ball will actually do if you hit it with

a given percentage of power. You must use the cursor and previews in tandem

if you want to accurately putt the ball, as the values and trajectories attributed

solely to the cursor on the green seem arbitrary and, at times, completely insane.

As a game that allows you to enhance your players’ attributes through trials,

Outlaw Golf starts you out with some awful characters with terribly low

stats. These lead to plenty of random mishaps, such as hitting the ball directly

into the water on the right when you were aimed straight down the fairway. So

comes into play composure, or your player’s lack thereof.

Composure is a meter that goes from “Smokin” (suburb-speech for Good) to “In the Gutter” (incidentally, where wrestling-game fans live). Good composure means your character will screw up less often; bad composure means your character will screw up all the time. Mix bad overall stats with bad composure, and you will never hit a straight ball again.

The

whole composure concept is very intriguing, but it’s a little uneven. Hitting

an ace shot right onto the green when you have awful composure will take you

a whole half-centimeter up from ‘wretching violently into your club-bag’ to

‘simply puking on your shoes.’ But if you have awesome composure and your ball

barely rolls into the rough an inch from the fairway, you’ll lose all composure

completely, and be back to puking everywhere from nerves.

In order to recover lost composure, you’re awarded ‘Beating’ tokens, which

you can cash in and break open a can of you-know-what on your caddy. This really

just amounts to a simple timing game that wears thin, although I admit, watching

each player’s beating for the first time is kind of fun.

Graphically, Outlaw Golf is less than I’d expect from a Xbox game.

Some of the animations are good, but the water effects are cheap, the characters

seem blocky, and there are framerate issues when the computer is thinking about

what shot it wants to take.

The game features the most offensive announcer ever. Steve Carell from The

Daily Show lays on the abuse pretty thick, yet is never actually funny.

His awful impersonations of blacks and Latinos serve no purpose and are totally

cliché. I can barely believe it’s actually him doing the commentary; he’s hysterically

witty on The Daily Show, but is just pathetic here.

Outlaw Golf is a very mediocre game. The actual play mechanics are

solid, but the abundance of white-trash gimmickry gets in the way. They clearly

spent more time on the characters than they did on the courses, which isn’t

a great design choice. Rent it if you must, and then go get your mom to buy

you a forty.