It’s been quite a few years since Mario has teed up, and I have to admit that I’ve missed it. Sure, the core of every Mario Golf game is essentially the same, but the various modifications and supplementary content which Camelot has so cleverly layered on to each new installment of the series has always made the return trip worth the experience. Consider: the original Mario Golf was essentially Hot Shots Golf with Nintendo characters and a few new modes and twists; Toadstool Tour shook it up with crazier courses and challenges; and the handheld entries—wholly unique experiences all their own—introduced incentivizing RPG elements to help offset the obviously inferior visual presentation.
I’ll admit it, I missed this.
So, now that it’s been nearly a decade, what does World Tour bring to the table? The answer is actually a bit underwhelming: in short, this is pureblood Mario Golf, but it’s stripped of the creative progressivism that made the previous entries so individually unique. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing if you’re merely hankering for a return to the sport after sitting out for ten years—or if you’re completely new to the series altogether of course—but it does cast a cloud over what is otherwise a relatively solid and fairly extensive portable sports venture.
For starters, there is the Castle Club campaign mode, which is more or less a poorly-conceived attempt at adapting the adventure mode templates of the previous installments to your personal Mii. It isn’t that the gameplay itself is lacking; on the contrary, it’s plenty of fun. Rather, it’s that there is no real sense of direction apart from simply unlocking items and winning the most obvious tournaments—much of which can be conquered by veteran Mario Golfers in just several short hours. It’s true that there is lots more to unlock (a total of four 18-hole courses and seven 9-hole courses), but that isn’t immediately obvious, nor is it necessarily encouraged, which is odd.
Having said that, there are some 500+ collectible accessories you can unlock and purchase with in-game coins, and they can be used to improve the performance of your Mii while golfing. It is a cool concept, even if it is not likely to encourage most players to spend more time with what is otherwise a pretty weak adventure campaign.
Some cool-looking environments await in the 9-hole courses.
But if you stick with it and spend some time exploring the content that’s available, there is an awful lot to behold nonetheless. The four traditional 18-hole courses range from easy to difficult and are just what you’d expect given the series’ history. The 9-hole courses, on the other hand, are unlocked by completing challenges, which are available directly from the main menu in somewhat confusing fashion (where there are two main options, Mario Golf Quick Round, and Castle Club, the former of which includes the rest of the play options).
In Challenge Mode—which is probably the coolest part of the game—nine of the game’s courses (both 18-hole and 9-hole varieties) feature ten different assigned challenges apiece. These consist of an assortment of Star Coin Collections, Ring Shots, 100-coin collections, Score Attacks (score below a certain number of strokes), character matches, Time Attacks (essentially speed golf), and slot machine Point Challenges. Once that’s done, there’s actually even more Challenge content—so if you’re concerned about being shortchanged by World Tour, don’t be. As the coins are collected in Challenge Mode, additional courses unlock, Challenges along with them.
Elsewhere, it’s mostly business as usual. The single-player quick matches are conventional fare, with Stroke Play and Match Play available, along with Speed Golf and Point Tourney play (you win points for your stroke count on each hole). Playing against a character and winning unlocks a more powerful version of that particular character, just as it has in previous installments—a feature which incentivizes matches against anyone you plan on using.
General gameplay is good, but aiming can be a pain.
The actual gameplay itself is fairly solid with a few exceptions. If you’ve played any Mario Golf games in the past, you’re already familiar with the basics. A few things have been added; the most impacting is the new Item Shots, which carry special attributes that allow the player to, for instance, burn through trees and foliage (Fire Flower), Freeze the terrain below (Ice Flower), or ignore the effects of wind (Bullet Bill). There are interesting mostly in unique situations where precision play is necessary in obstructive environments (such as is often the case in Ring Shot or the coin collection challenges), but generally in normal play the items remain a bit of an afterthought.
Something which is particularly problematic is the shot camera and aiming mechanic. While ambiguous shot path displays are a part of the golf videogame formula (the player is expected to compensate for such factors as wind), having to fight the camera to discover the estimated path is not. It’s unfortunate that the suggested shots are also so frequently poor, as adjusting the shot using the troubled camera system quickly becomes cumbersome.
The 3D really doesn’t add much to the gameplay either. While you might expect there to be a considerable amount of layered depth to the presentation, it actually doesn’t make much of a difference at all. In fact, some detail is lost while the 3D is active. Unlike some of the more recent “second-gen” 3DS games, we quickly found that disabling 3D made for a more comfortable (or, at least, visually equivalent) experience.
One big plus, meanwhile, is the online functionality. Not only are traditional versus matches available via random skill-based matchups, but Tournament play is alive and well, with scheduled tournaments (“Mario Open”) hosted by Nintendo, as well as custom tournaments created by other players. The whole package is far better organized than most anything else Nintendo has done with online, and it makes participating in the events or even just teeing off against an opponent on a whim convenient enough to actually be likely.
Plenty of favorite characters make a return.
The game also features downloadable content, all of which is scheduled to be released within the next couple of months. This amounts to three different course packs of two 18-hole courses apiece (some classic courses, others new) along with special characters. A Season Pass provides all three courses and Gold Mario for $14.99.
Overall, World Tour doesn’t feel like much of an advancement on any front other than online play, where it shines more than we would have expected. If you’re excited about the prospects of online Mario Golf, it’s probably worth the cash just for that alone. On the other hand, it’s a shame some of the (rather noticeable) wrinkles weren’t ironed out by veteran developers Camelot in the process—especially considering it’s been ten years since the last installment. And while we would have liked to see something more inherently exciting than what’s here, it’s hard to deny its appeal if you ever enjoyed what the series had to offer from the start.
