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IGN Review of King of Clubs: Mini-Golf
Miniature golf has yet to be done well on Wii. There have been a few attempts so far, but all have fallen flat -- 2K's Carnival Games take on the sport didn't pan out, Shin'en's WiiWare rendition didn't fly, and you're not going to trick very many people into going crazy with the Kidz Sports version. You'd think that it'd be easy to translate the putting mechanics presented first in Nintendo's own Wii Sports into a fully-featured putt-putt product, but it just hasn't happened. And King of Clubs doesn't do any better.
King of Clubs Mini-Golf is yet another attempt at re-creating the miniature sport on Wii, but falls just as short as the rest of the crowd -- or did, when it first arrived on store shelves in the States last summer. That you probably never heard of it or knew it was out speaks well to its lack of impact on its genre, though it tried its best to set itself apart with a ridiculous storyline and a set of grown men in full costume as its golfers.
The premise presented is that Bubba, a less-than-sane Elvis impersonator, has come into a windfall of cash that he uses to construct a miniature golf utopia somewhere in the middle of an uninhabited desert. Then, not wanting to simply hit the little links by his lonesome, he organizes a small tournament for five of his friends -- and forces them to dress up in ridiculous outfits to thematically match his five differently-decorated mini-golf courses. The winner of the tourney gets declared as the King of Clubs. The prize, however, certainly won't be a return of the victor's lost dignity.
It's a narrative that ultimately has little bearing on how the game plays out, and works as little more than a loose tie-together for all of the varied courses and characters. The selection could have benefited from some stronger shoring up, too, as individually each hole and human are pretty generic -- the landscapes are all simplistic, looking intentionally constructed out of cheap cardboard cut-outs, and the players are all equally lifeless. You've got a guy in a caveman get-up, and another in a spaceman suit. Thrilling.
King of Clubs could have brought it all back together with a solid gameplay engine and control style, though, as the window dressing never matters much when a game gets its handling right -- but, again, this too is below average. The way motion control is shoehorned into the control scheme is unnatural, and making even the simplest shots is unwieldy.
The system is like this -- you line up your shot with the D-Pad, as an on-screen guide line shows you the direction your ball with travel after it's hit. You then strike your best Wii Sports Golf pose, holding the Remote like a club, pointing at the floor. The A Button tells the game to begin registering your backwards swinging motion as you fill an on-screen power meter, while a second press of A sets and locks the power at the desired level. Then, finally, one last swing of the Remote sends the ball sailing.
It sounds like it would work -- it doesn't. And that's because the motion controlled parts of the process actually aren't controlled by your motions at all. They're entirely arbitrary. After you press A to begin your swing, you're supposed to swing the Remote backwards to set the power, right? But you don't have to. You can swing it back, and forth, and spin it in circles. All the while the power meter on the screen will dance around, filling and depleting itself until you've gotten bored. You can go for minutes, if you like, before you finally press A to lock the power level. There's no timing to it at all.
And, then, the final swing doesn't matter either -- it has no bearing on your shot, since the direction and power have already been determined. It's just another arbitrary motion tacked on, completely unnecessary to the action that's occurring in front of you.
There's a standard set of extra options to be found in King of Clubs, from unlockable putters, courses and characters to multiplayer modes and all the rest. But, really, with an unattractive presentation and a control scheme that actually makes the simulation of the sport feel worse for having included motion elements, few players will likely stick around long enough to explore the depth of the product ... or invite their friends to be disappointed too.
©2009-01-14, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved
King of Clubs Mini-Golf is yet another attempt at re-creating the miniature sport on Wii, but falls just as short as the rest of the crowd -- or did, when it first arrived on store shelves in the States last summer. That you probably never heard of it or knew it was out speaks well to its lack of impact on its genre, though it tried its best to set itself apart with a ridiculous storyline and a set of grown men in full costume as its golfers.
The premise presented is that Bubba, a less-than-sane Elvis impersonator, has come into a windfall of cash that he uses to construct a miniature golf utopia somewhere in the middle of an uninhabited desert. Then, not wanting to simply hit the little links by his lonesome, he organizes a small tournament for five of his friends -- and forces them to dress up in ridiculous outfits to thematically match his five differently-decorated mini-golf courses. The winner of the tourney gets declared as the King of Clubs. The prize, however, certainly won't be a return of the victor's lost dignity.
It's a narrative that ultimately has little bearing on how the game plays out, and works as little more than a loose tie-together for all of the varied courses and characters. The selection could have benefited from some stronger shoring up, too, as individually each hole and human are pretty generic -- the landscapes are all simplistic, looking intentionally constructed out of cheap cardboard cut-outs, and the players are all equally lifeless. You've got a guy in a caveman get-up, and another in a spaceman suit. Thrilling.
King of Clubs could have brought it all back together with a solid gameplay engine and control style, though, as the window dressing never matters much when a game gets its handling right -- but, again, this too is below average. The way motion control is shoehorned into the control scheme is unnatural, and making even the simplest shots is unwieldy.
The system is like this -- you line up your shot with the D-Pad, as an on-screen guide line shows you the direction your ball with travel after it's hit. You then strike your best Wii Sports Golf pose, holding the Remote like a club, pointing at the floor. The A Button tells the game to begin registering your backwards swinging motion as you fill an on-screen power meter, while a second press of A sets and locks the power at the desired level. Then, finally, one last swing of the Remote sends the ball sailing.
It sounds like it would work -- it doesn't. And that's because the motion controlled parts of the process actually aren't controlled by your motions at all. They're entirely arbitrary. After you press A to begin your swing, you're supposed to swing the Remote backwards to set the power, right? But you don't have to. You can swing it back, and forth, and spin it in circles. All the while the power meter on the screen will dance around, filling and depleting itself until you've gotten bored. You can go for minutes, if you like, before you finally press A to lock the power level. There's no timing to it at all.
And, then, the final swing doesn't matter either -- it has no bearing on your shot, since the direction and power have already been determined. It's just another arbitrary motion tacked on, completely unnecessary to the action that's occurring in front of you.
There's a standard set of extra options to be found in King of Clubs, from unlockable putters, courses and characters to multiplayer modes and all the rest. But, really, with an unattractive presentation and a control scheme that actually makes the simulation of the sport feel worse for having included motion elements, few players will likely stick around long enough to explore the depth of the product ... or invite their friends to be disappointed too.
©2009-01-14, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved