Where the hell are my blood pressure tablets… OK, just one more try”
Cursed to Golf opens with your golfer on the 18th hole with a several-shot lead, only a few more shots to victory, and a win in the biggest tournament of your life. After a great drive, an iron and a wedge shot, victory looks all but guaranteed. You take another wedge shot - when disaster strikes, and you are struck by lightning. Now, personally, I think the golfing gods would strike you down as you have taken two wedge shots instead of a mid-iron when you can clearly reach the green in one - but that’s just my theory.
You wake up in golf purgatory and the only way out is to play 18 more holes. As a set up it’s very novel, and an interesting way to start the game.
The game has an amazing charm to it that seeps throughout the whole experience. The first thing I noticed was the ‘Sea Sports’ logo in the corner during the opening - a play on Sky Sports, it’s a very minor thing, but the little touches shine through, such as when you reach Purgatory, you meet a ghostly Scotsman who runs a golf shop known as Eterni-Tee, it’s all very charming.
The core gameplay is very simple. You have a driver, an iron and a wedge. You take a shot by pressing ‘X’ for power and ‘X’ again for trajectory - all nice and simple. You also have various traps to contend with; rough, bunkers, water, and TNT… you know, the usual things that you contend with on a golf course.
You only have a set limit of strokes to complete the hole that you are playing, luckily you can break silver and gold statues that are placed throughout to bump available strokes to beat the hole, also in your arsenal are ace cards that give you certain benefits, such more strokes, a practice ball to set off TNT or a metal ball that stops with no bounce. These cards are limited, and the fewer strokes taken to beat a hole will give you more money to buy packs in Eterni-Tee.
Obviously, so far nothing even remotely ‘roguelike’ has appeared. Well, if you lose a hole - that’s it, you’re done, round over, you died…again. If you fail a hole, you go right back to the start and the course changes, so you will have to retry on a brand-new course that will still have elements of the old holes - but traps will be in new places, and you will have to recalculate your strategy. This system brings in both severe pros and cons.
On the one hand, it makes every shot a taut affair, with little room for error, but failing on the later holes with the end in sight made me curse and nearly snap the object I was using to play the game. It also meant that I would take the safest option not to fail the round, which isn’t always very exciting, having to play it consistently safe, instead of taking some risky crazy shots, robbed some of the fun that golf games can have.
Rounds take about 4 hours, which is longer than an actual round of golf, assuming that you don’t play golf with people who take about forty practice swings and read every putt from every angle possible. The 18 holes themselves feel very different, but the multiple playthroughs don’t, there isn’t enough variety in them to make them very discerning, which kind of wore away at me over time.
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