Mario Golf Super Rush Review – There’s an art to how Nintendo usually iterates on its long-running series. That twist it almost always appears to discover makes us excited about what’s to come, while also looking back on fond memories already forged. Mario Golf: Super Rush, though, can be an exception to that trend – it’s sporadically fun but it frustratingly falls short of the green more often than not.
Its newly introduced Speed Golf mode is really a bright point that shakes up the formula, while its lacklustre Adventure mode is a short and not overly sweet few hours. It can make for a package as a whole that provides a few of the fun of the Mario Golf games of past generations, however when all will be said and done it lacks the variety, replayability, and general level of content needed to certainly be a standout in the series.
The original Mario Golf (titled NES Open Tournament Golf is the first game I really remember playing, when i graduated from crawling around and tangling in my dad’s controller wires to holding the pad myself. The core mechanics remain, and in addition to the obvious visual improvements, it doesn’t feel a million miles away from how it did 25-odd years ago: Line up your shot, press A to begin your swing, an again (or B if you need to apply backspin) to secure the energy of your shot.
Mario Golf: Super Rush Review
The innovation of players running around after their shots is fun but you may find yourself longing for a leisurely stroll over the course.
My first memory of Mario Golf involves showing my dad – who, like many Scottish dads I know, is a steadfastly committed and resolutely mediocre golfer – a round of the Nintendo 64 version when I was a child. I hoped that might be a potential bonding moment where our worlds temporarily collided, but after patiently watching me play a few holes as Luigi, he didn’t see the point. Why not just perform real golf, he asked, which to me observemed a bit like asking why you didn’t just becomecome a Premiership footballer rather than watching football on TV.
It is a question ththet would make even less sense now. In 1999, Mario Golf was just normal golf with Nintendo characters. This month’s Mario Golf: Super Rush is really a mad cartoonish caricature of the activity played by Nintendo characters in fabulously camp outfits, where you must sprint after your shot as soon as you’ve hit it, ride tornadoes up cliffs to get the ball, and try to avoid the tackles and explosions that other players send your way. Doing some of that down the real-life course on a Sunday would, at best, allow you to get politely removed from the premises.
It’s all geared towards upping the competitive stakes. Battle Golf, the most madcap game mode, has you competing in a neon stadium with nine holes, where the first person to sink three shots is the winner. Thwill be is fun, and matches can turn around in seconds, like a good round of Mario Kart. But on more traditional nine- or 18-hole courses, Super Rush’s embellwill behments to the rhythm of golf feel forced.
You can play Mario Golf either with button controls or by detaching a Switch controller and swinging it like a golf club, which is definitely more pleasurable when you’re performing multiplayer at home. The solo mode is a cute golf adventure, in which you take a little Mii avatar through a series of tournaments to understand the ins and outs of the game and unlock all the courses.
The rules change every few rounds – there’s speed-golf, where strokes are as important as the time you take playing around the course; cross-country golf, where you have to work around weird hazards such as for example giant angry clouds and chip the ball round the program in virtually any order; in the desert, you need to finwill beh the course before your water runs out.
Most of these modes involve dashing around the courses by walking, managing a little stamina meter at the bottom of the screen. That is Super Rush’s big idea, the main change it makes to the entire notion of video game golf, but golf is fundamentally a sport where it can make sense to invest some time – and the fact is that sprinting after your ball is not very fun.
My character seemed to skate on the landscapes instead of running and jumping like a Mario character should, and the stamina meter will be always on the verge of operating out, which ironically made the overall game feel slow rather of speedy and exciting. It also robs you of those nervous few moments after you’ve taken your shot, where you watch the ball land and roll, hoping it doesn’t carry in to the rough.
It is possible to play standard golf in Super Rush, special power shots notwithstanding. There’s a specific mode for this. And after a while that’s what I found myself longing for: a serene walk around beautiful fantasy Mushroom Kingdom golf courses, free from annoying sound effects and intrusive other players, where the most bizarre thing to happen might be an unlikely save from a tricky bunker lie.
I haven’t played an extremely good, aesthetically pleasing and straightforward golf game in years. Battle Golf is a good time, and Super Rush’s range of online and local multiplayer options and simple controls helps it be a good option for living-room fun. But this simply not a golfing technique that’s especially rewarding to play by yourself.
Mario Golf: Super Rush has gone out 25 June; £49.99
