Hot Shots Golf Fore!
The goofiest of golfers is back and now online, but is that enough to improve upon its predecessor?
Published: September 2, 2004
Golf enthusiasts have it easy. They have it easy because, when it comes to videogame renditions of the typically laid back game, they really can't go wrong. For diehard PGA nuts, the Tiger Woods titles time and time again deliver a solid, authentic take on the real thing. With those who aren't as wrapped up in the professionalism of it all, Hot Shots Golf has been the go-to series as a wildly enjoyable, if not a bit off-the-wall, remedy for the casual players. We were rocked by the robustness and pure polish of HSG3 when it hit the PS2 two years ago, and with the latest installment, Hot Shots Golf Fore!, the game has hopped onto the online bandwagon yet retaining the same satisfying offline experience. And while everything offered in the latter is a clone of its predecessor (save the return of mini golf), the joy of obtaining the plethora of unlockables makes putting in those seemingly endless hours all worth it.
What will undoubtedly entice fans of HSG3 into throwing down the proper cash to pick up Fore! is the ability to take on friends or strangers online. With a network adapter and a broadband connection intact, you're able to enter in into the Hot Shots Golf Fore! "universe" and proceed into one of the 100 open lobbies. What often times happens is that only the first lobby is populated by players, while the other 99 remain either empty or resident to a person or two. Nonetheless, it's never too tough to find a game, and if you choose to, you can always create your own and tweak the options as you wish. Online games are broken down into two basic types: Tournament and Rival Modes. Both are more or less duplicates of their offline likenesses (Rival being like a Vs. match), but the fact that your opponents are actually human players really enhances the sense of competition.
Completing the experience are the ever-useful chat capabilities. As players join up in a tournament, you can exchange words (usually those of encouragement, believe it or not – seems to be a pretty friendly community) with them as the start-up timer clicks down or between holes. Results from each tournament are submitted to a nationwide ranking, so if you're really gunning to be a top dog, you'll find them useful for tracking down just what kind of stiff competition is out there. Assuming your opponent has a keyboard (or is willing to type his/her messages tediously letter for letter with an on-screen keyboard), the chat capabilities of Rival Mode can be employed as well. It certainly is neat to be able to compliment your opponent on his/her long putt right after he/she makes it (with a clever word bubble appearing next your character's icon). If by chance you end up with opponents who take the silent, chat-less approach as they play through, online mode will feel simply like a rehash of its offline counterparts. Luckily, this is hardly ever the case.
As aforementioned, HSG3 fans may find Fore!'s offline modes to be, maybe a first, disappointingly familiar. But believe me when I say that it is oh so sweetly addictive to unlock each and every little tidbit in the game, even if it's just for completing your collection. For the most part, it's the Vs. mode that does it, for you once again are required to go head-to-head with CPU-controlled players and emerge victorious in order make them a selectable character. Clap Hanz has reduced Vs. without sacrificing the edge of competition. Some of the characters put up a real challenge, and in those cases, actually defeating them makes it well worth the work. After a victory, you can take on the same character in Hard Mode in order to unlock additional costumes. Certainly not as rewarding, but fun nonetheless.
As for Fore!'s other unlockable goodies, they can either be obtained in tournaments or by purchasing them from the shop. The point system is present in nearly all the modes, and assuming you perform well or are patient enough to rack 'em up, they can be spent on the array of items in stock at the shop (although you have to play through many a tournaments for most items to even become available). These goodies include clubs, balls, caddies, costumes, capsules, wallpapers, and more. Some are actually crucial to your game, for example, scoring Eagle on a Par 5 would practically impossible without the use of the Big Air clubs, enabling you to get on the green in two.
On top of the sweet incentive to nab every unlockable, Hot Shots Golf Fore!'s offline features are freshened up a bit with the return of mini golf. Truly, the rules of the game are ingenious, as the objective is to rack up the most points by milking each shot for all its worth. As your ball rolls along in a single shot, the points progressively add up, so taking the longest, and in most cases, trickiest path will reward you better than a direct putt to the hole. The maximum points that can be obtained on your first shot is 50, and 5 for your second. Take more than two putts and you're forced to give up. Perform well enough on the 9-hole putt-putt course and you'll unlock and second, more complex course. Limited? Sure, but it's fun while it lasts.
Familiarity won't simply exist in the game modes, either – regular Hot Shots should feel right at home with the barely tweaked on-course gameplay. The three-click swinging mechanic is certainly tried and… well, tried, but in all honesty, it never ceases to be a challenge. Wind, slopes and physics must always be taken into account, and nailing a perfect full impact drive every time is no easy task. Greens are again laid out in grid style, with moving dots indicating slopes, inclines and declines. One can't cease to applaud Clap Hanz (no pun intended) for making the driving mechanic appealing to beginners, with Beginners Clubs and a two-click Easy Mode, yet a test for even veterans, with fancy like add-ons for your shot like backspins, curves, extra power and so on. Other golf franchises have apparently advanced past the HSG franchise by utilizing the analog sticks. It certainly couldn't hurt for Clap Hanz to take a hint from its competitors, but know this about the current controls of HSGF!: they work.
Hot Shots Golf Fore! noticeably has some graphical strengths and weaknesses. Topping things off are the courses, which are about as lush and complete as they come. The trees sway, airplanes and birds often soar overhead, and the environments accordingly adjust to each season. Heck, they'll even effect your play, as rain puts a damper on your ball's rolling distance, for one. As for everything else, there's certainly room for improvement. Character models are sufficient, but are about as standard as they come. I couldn't help but notice that when an opponent golfer takes the role of an onlooker as you prepare you putt on the green, and particularly in the case of Sam and Ratchet, they look like characters right out of PaRappa the Rapper. The gallery also suffers from the same seemingly two-dimensional flatness. Clearly the characters took a backseat to course design, so the best we can do is hope extra detail is put into them if/when HSG5 rolls around.
Audio accompaniments are a grab bag as well. The often soothing tunes run right along the same tracks as HSG3's soundtrack, with appropriate variations for each course (tropical sounding for the Aloha Beach Resort, a clearly Eastern-influenced score for the Samurai Golf Club and Silk Road Classic). Nothing spectacular, that's for sure, but they get the job done. Unfortunately, character voice-overs don't fare quite as well. Each golfer is slapped with a stereotypical array of phrases and comments – some not so bad, some more of a cacophony than anything else. Brad, a West Coast stone… err, surfer, gushes "totally rad" responses, while a "calculations expert" named Hubert is just asking to be socked in the face. Thank God the irksome monster of a 7-year-old girl caddy is locked from the start – she can stay on that shop shelf, as far as I'm concerned. Sailing on the same boat are the sometimes encouraging but often outrageous comments from the (peanut) gallery, but in good taste, they're worth a laugh or two. On a lighter note, platforming favorites Ratchet (as golfer) and Clank (as caddy) and Jak and Daxter (same deal, respectively) are voiced by their proper actors, which salvages the game from an otherwise mediocre sound department. Plus, it's a blast to play as them.
So is Hot Shots Golf Fore! worth the buy? For series newcomers and casual golf goers, yes. Even if you mastered its predecessor, the online mode, mini golf and wealth of new characters, courses and unlockables really warrants another go at the series, and if you're skeptical, at least rent it. Despite its goofy and, possibly to some, even tasteless look, HSGF! is one of the most enjoyable golf games on the market, and surely the finest I've ever come across in its field. Give it a shot.
What will undoubtedly entice fans of HSG3 into throwing down the proper cash to pick up Fore! is the ability to take on friends or strangers online. With a network adapter and a broadband connection intact, you're able to enter in into the Hot Shots Golf Fore! "universe" and proceed into one of the 100 open lobbies. What often times happens is that only the first lobby is populated by players, while the other 99 remain either empty or resident to a person or two. Nonetheless, it's never too tough to find a game, and if you choose to, you can always create your own and tweak the options as you wish. Online games are broken down into two basic types: Tournament and Rival Modes. Both are more or less duplicates of their offline likenesses (Rival being like a Vs. match), but the fact that your opponents are actually human players really enhances the sense of competition.
Completing the experience are the ever-useful chat capabilities. As players join up in a tournament, you can exchange words (usually those of encouragement, believe it or not – seems to be a pretty friendly community) with them as the start-up timer clicks down or between holes. Results from each tournament are submitted to a nationwide ranking, so if you're really gunning to be a top dog, you'll find them useful for tracking down just what kind of stiff competition is out there. Assuming your opponent has a keyboard (or is willing to type his/her messages tediously letter for letter with an on-screen keyboard), the chat capabilities of Rival Mode can be employed as well. It certainly is neat to be able to compliment your opponent on his/her long putt right after he/she makes it (with a clever word bubble appearing next your character's icon). If by chance you end up with opponents who take the silent, chat-less approach as they play through, online mode will feel simply like a rehash of its offline counterparts. Luckily, this is hardly ever the case.
As aforementioned, HSG3 fans may find Fore!'s offline modes to be, maybe a first, disappointingly familiar. But believe me when I say that it is oh so sweetly addictive to unlock each and every little tidbit in the game, even if it's just for completing your collection. For the most part, it's the Vs. mode that does it, for you once again are required to go head-to-head with CPU-controlled players and emerge victorious in order make them a selectable character. Clap Hanz has reduced Vs. without sacrificing the edge of competition. Some of the characters put up a real challenge, and in those cases, actually defeating them makes it well worth the work. After a victory, you can take on the same character in Hard Mode in order to unlock additional costumes. Certainly not as rewarding, but fun nonetheless.
As for Fore!'s other unlockable goodies, they can either be obtained in tournaments or by purchasing them from the shop. The point system is present in nearly all the modes, and assuming you perform well or are patient enough to rack 'em up, they can be spent on the array of items in stock at the shop (although you have to play through many a tournaments for most items to even become available). These goodies include clubs, balls, caddies, costumes, capsules, wallpapers, and more. Some are actually crucial to your game, for example, scoring Eagle on a Par 5 would practically impossible without the use of the Big Air clubs, enabling you to get on the green in two.
On top of the sweet incentive to nab every unlockable, Hot Shots Golf Fore!'s offline features are freshened up a bit with the return of mini golf. Truly, the rules of the game are ingenious, as the objective is to rack up the most points by milking each shot for all its worth. As your ball rolls along in a single shot, the points progressively add up, so taking the longest, and in most cases, trickiest path will reward you better than a direct putt to the hole. The maximum points that can be obtained on your first shot is 50, and 5 for your second. Take more than two putts and you're forced to give up. Perform well enough on the 9-hole putt-putt course and you'll unlock and second, more complex course. Limited? Sure, but it's fun while it lasts.
Familiarity won't simply exist in the game modes, either – regular Hot Shots should feel right at home with the barely tweaked on-course gameplay. The three-click swinging mechanic is certainly tried and… well, tried, but in all honesty, it never ceases to be a challenge. Wind, slopes and physics must always be taken into account, and nailing a perfect full impact drive every time is no easy task. Greens are again laid out in grid style, with moving dots indicating slopes, inclines and declines. One can't cease to applaud Clap Hanz (no pun intended) for making the driving mechanic appealing to beginners, with Beginners Clubs and a two-click Easy Mode, yet a test for even veterans, with fancy like add-ons for your shot like backspins, curves, extra power and so on. Other golf franchises have apparently advanced past the HSG franchise by utilizing the analog sticks. It certainly couldn't hurt for Clap Hanz to take a hint from its competitors, but know this about the current controls of HSGF!: they work.
Hot Shots Golf Fore! noticeably has some graphical strengths and weaknesses. Topping things off are the courses, which are about as lush and complete as they come. The trees sway, airplanes and birds often soar overhead, and the environments accordingly adjust to each season. Heck, they'll even effect your play, as rain puts a damper on your ball's rolling distance, for one. As for everything else, there's certainly room for improvement. Character models are sufficient, but are about as standard as they come. I couldn't help but notice that when an opponent golfer takes the role of an onlooker as you prepare you putt on the green, and particularly in the case of Sam and Ratchet, they look like characters right out of PaRappa the Rapper. The gallery also suffers from the same seemingly two-dimensional flatness. Clearly the characters took a backseat to course design, so the best we can do is hope extra detail is put into them if/when HSG5 rolls around.
Audio accompaniments are a grab bag as well. The often soothing tunes run right along the same tracks as HSG3's soundtrack, with appropriate variations for each course (tropical sounding for the Aloha Beach Resort, a clearly Eastern-influenced score for the Samurai Golf Club and Silk Road Classic). Nothing spectacular, that's for sure, but they get the job done. Unfortunately, character voice-overs don't fare quite as well. Each golfer is slapped with a stereotypical array of phrases and comments – some not so bad, some more of a cacophony than anything else. Brad, a West Coast stone… err, surfer, gushes "totally rad" responses, while a "calculations expert" named Hubert is just asking to be socked in the face. Thank God the irksome monster of a 7-year-old girl caddy is locked from the start – she can stay on that shop shelf, as far as I'm concerned. Sailing on the same boat are the sometimes encouraging but often outrageous comments from the (peanut) gallery, but in good taste, they're worth a laugh or two. On a lighter note, platforming favorites Ratchet (as golfer) and Clank (as caddy) and Jak and Daxter (same deal, respectively) are voiced by their proper actors, which salvages the game from an otherwise mediocre sound department. Plus, it's a blast to play as them.
So is Hot Shots Golf Fore! worth the buy? For series newcomers and casual golf goers, yes. Even if you mastered its predecessor, the online mode, mini golf and wealth of new characters, courses and unlockables really warrants another go at the series, and if you're skeptical, at least rent it. Despite its goofy and, possibly to some, even tasteless look, HSGF! is one of the most enjoyable golf games on the market, and surely the finest I've ever come across in its field. Give it a shot.
