Should you hit the links with this title, or wait in the clubhouse instead?
Developer: Gameloft
Publisher: Gameloft
Release Date: July 28, 2011
Score: 4.3 / 5
Let’s Golf! 3D is the first, and so far only, original 3D downloadable title on the 3DS; the other titles are all 3D Classics remakes of old NES titles. I use the word “original” a bit loosely, as the game is actually a port of the iOS game Let’s Golf! 2, but the title still has a lot to live up to. Gameloft is an established gaming company, and we’ve seen that golf and Nintendo can mix well; how well does Let’s Golf! 3D measure up?
Anyone who’s played a Mario Golf title probably has a good idea how this game controls. When your character gets onto the green, you have an image of the arc your ball will travel in, and an image of roughly where your ball will land. You can zoom in and out along this arc to get a closer visual of the path your ball will take and where it will land, and use the slide pad to adjust your ball’s trajectory, taking into account obstacles and wind strength.
Once you’ve chosen a trajectory, you engage in a short timing mini-game; you have a bar move across a meter, and you want to stop the bar moving at a specific point in order to get the proper strength and accuracy. This title, utilizes the touch screen to let you put spin on your shot; you use your stylus (or, if you’re me, the back of your fingernail) to spin a golf ball on the bottom screen, and it will roll in that direction upon landing.
One of the major features of Let’s Golf! 3D is the character system. As you play more courses with a character, they’ll gain experience and level up, and their golfing stats will improve. You can also customize the physical appearance of the characters you choose; you can unlock up to eight of them.
There are six full eighteen-hole courses to play on, five of which you must unlock by playing the game, and several different play modes. There’s an Instant Play mode, that instantly hooks you up with three random holes from any of the unlocked courses; you can also play the hole of your choice in Free Hole mode. Career mode has you playing a number of different tournaments on the various courses, between three and eighteen holes, with some possible variety on the rules as well. Challenge mode will give you a number of specific goals that you need to fulfill on certain holes, such as making a hard putt in a certain number of shots. Lastly, the game offers a local two-player competitive option, with two players trading off shots on the same 3DS.
The gameplay sounds fairly simple, but Gameloft has the mechanics of it refined pretty nicely, and the game’s very intuitive and fun to play. If I boot it up to hit the links for one or two holes, it’s not hard for me to get sucked in and end up playing for an hour or more. The 3D effect looks very good, and when you’re on the fairway it can give you a good idea of the lie of the ground, though it’s not as useful during putting. The game’s music, while not particularly memorable, is soothing and a good complement to a relaxing golf game. There’s a good amount of content here, as well; each course in Career mode has seven tournaments of varying length, and there are twenty different challenges on top of that. For a $7 game, there’s a good amount of content to keep you busy.
Being an iOS port, there are a few presentation issues to be brought up. The menus are a bit shoddy looking, and some selections require more presses or taps than should be necessary. What’s worse is the loading, which is near-constant when you’re not on the golf course. Going from screen to screen always takes a couple seconds, and even highlighting different characters to play as gives a brief pause. It feels like the engine was not optimized to handle 3D graphics, and the user pays the price a bit.
Overall, though, the refined gameplay outweighs any problems brought up by a problematic port job. For a game originally designed to work on touch screen only, Gameloft has managed to adapt their Let’s Golf! title to 3DS in a very impressive manner. If you’re looking for a fun game to help you pass time, and want to sample the 3D graphics that the system has to offer, this is one of your best downloadable options.
