Recent reviews by ZaptorZap

especially if you're a fan of similar, not-so-serious golf games such as Kirby's Dream Course, or much of the Mario Golf series as I am. My 2nd, and winning, round, took place over nearly 5 short and sweet hours. This conflicts with my playtime due to me playing while offline on a laptop, I now notice, so it's a great, power efficient time killer if you have no internet.

I played Cursed to Golf with an Xbox controller, and found it very comfortable. I look forward to replaying this game with the Steam Deck—it seems as though Proton supports it[www.protondb.com] very well.

Pacing was fine for the most part, it appears as though I'm the only one who noticed and adequately used the Fast Forward button throughout the campaign as I read other reviews, but locking such a vital mechanic, the Spin mechanic, behind a lost run seemed disingenuous.

Originally posted by vinesauce:

So Spin is like an amazin-I can't believe they gave me a full run without Spin; or they tried to. Those bastards.

This was compounded into an issue with the unforgiving level design at a macro standpoint. Each terrain block in the very first world(I think that's called The Swamp) is, well, very blocky. This means when you land too close to one, for the most part, you're just screwed. Take a Wedge shot backwards an inordinate distance, and you might be allowed to use your Driver next time. It's not as though the level designers shy away from rounding out corners in The Desert, where large sections of bunker hazards have diagonal slopes, so I think having sloped out, fairway corners in The Swamp could've reduced some initial frustration.

There was also some incredibly tight shots throughout the rest of the campaign, where you had about one or two frames to confirm your shot angle, or the entire shot was denied, often ending up in a penalty. I don't mind this being a challenge, but I would've much preferred an Ace Card that allowed you to guarantee these shots(by manually setting your power/angle through pixel-perfect steps, if you needed them) as opposed to Mulligan, which I hardly ever found a use for.(Ironically, I did find it helpful to undo the insane setbacks in the very last biome, but the last biome doesn't really need more handicaps.) A card like this would likely be balanced by not allowing you to use other mid-shot Ace Cards during its effect.

Above all else, though, I would've enjoyed planning shots more if I had any sort of description for what would happen with certain hazards and much more description on Ace Cards. For example, the allure of an electrical status effect on my Golf ball meant absolutely nothing to me, and thus, I never used the Ace Card that electrified your Golf ball. Why would I? Nothing seemed to fit with that interaction. Ice freezing water, and Fire burning through vines was straightforward enough in comparison. Instead of throwing text at the issue, perhaps consider video examples of interactions, which replace the card's beautifully illustrated art after hovering over the card for a while.

Of course, you could just unlock the Driving Range to all biomes instead of just the first one, which was a bit of a strange design choice to me. The Driving Range in general was a bit lacking in unique hazards though—I hardly ever felt the need to visit it while it was available. It would likely need to dynamically expand as you progress through the game if you are to consider this an alternative. The choice is nice, though.

Birdie Eye view features a big crosshair, but it's useless beyond making sure you follow your Rule of Thirds while in the mode, I guess. I believe it would make sense to describe hazards in this mode—nothing more than text descriptions. I understand that elemental interactions are dynamic, so instead of explaining the interaction on Ace Cards, you can explain the interaction in the level itself through Birdie Eye view. This sort of interaction would also allow you to see where Teleporters bring you, and easily follow Drill bits without squinting for minutes

The rouge-like mechanics didn't really strike me, as I reasonably breezed through most of the game on what may as well have been my first real round. I did make extensive use of both available "second chance" abilities, and planned for future runs by banking Ace Cards, but by the end of the cavernous area, I just broke the bank with my newfound safety(The third ability was worded pretty weirdly, but I think I would've been safe?) and had a very powerful Ace Card deck.

The economy in general wasn't very engaging, although I understand that it's a tradeoff between scoring terribly, and thus racking up mid-hole bonuses, to get that kind of profit, and scoring efficiently to end up tight on cash. When you're on the left side of this equation, there's little to zero reason to not sweep Eterni-Tee clean of all products—if you don't, the next time you're around, you'll just have a ton of cash and no stock to buy into. Would have been interesting to see your liquid assets mean something by the end of the game, but unfortunately, that doesn't seem to happen.

Comparing myself against the leaderboards, though? I placed in the top 1000, and I would consider my round a very mediocre round. I would have loved to see some kind of replay of the current World Record run, which sits at a Hole-In-One in every hole, extremely well beyond what #2 has! Other reviews mention plainly including some sort of Multiplayer mode, and I think an addition of that sort would be well received, but I don't think it should define the identity of this game.

---

This review may seem critical, but at the end of the day, I definitely enjoyed my time golfing in the underworld. It's a fine addition into what I feel is an unsaturated genre, the arcade golf genre, and I can always enjoy a return to this style of gameplay. The story wasn't pedantic to me, although the ending was a bit mute to my actual experience, and the art is as gorgeous as it comes; particularly when combined with the amazing soundtrack everyone agrees on.

This kind of game might simply not appeal to your choices, but it's far more exciting than real Golf. It's certainly less action packed than something like WHAT THE GOLF?, though. Once again: if you're into the genre, Cursed to Golf is well worth the asking price.

Neat little game. Certainly well worth the low low price of free. Games can draw out a little too long, and on these aforementioned games that last too long, I noticed that there wasn't any music aside from the starting track. Other than that I'd like to some p2p private servers. It was a rollercoaster of switching between friends and people I don't know if a friend disconnects.

what a crazy cool game. i played gunpoint some time ago and loved it. i only thought "man i wished this game was a top down generated rogue-like space game" and this game sure did scratch that itch! the only request i have could be that you can see a replay of your missions in real-time. it would be after you've completed any mission you take on success or not (when you see other stats).