Repetition and unpredictable physics spoil the fun
DANGEROUS Golf makes many nods towards the Burnout franchise, some subtle and some extremely overt. This is due to Dangerous Golf being the brainchild of many of the same minds behind the classic explosive racing games.
Dangerous Golf has about as much to do with golf as the Burnout series did with actual racing. The aim of this game is to - you guessed it - cause as much destruction as possible and eventually putt the ball into the hole in the flashiest manner possible.
Dangerous Golf features a fairly expansive main mode which features 100 stages across 10 tours and four locations. Beginning in a French palace, you’ll soon unlock the US, Australia and England.
Each of these areas have locations that are often repeated but each level will bring a new arrangement of precious and delicate objects for you to wreak havoc on.
We’ve all had fantasies of smashing up brittle and expensive objects and the developers Three Fields have capitalised on this common daydream. Each location is resplendent with food, fragile objects and expensive things.
The simple act of wreaking havoc in each level is enough to keep you playing, as it’s extremely satisfying sending vast quantities of paraphernalia crashing to the floor.
Unfortunately, all of this destruction too often obscures the view - which is from a camera that’s tight in behind the ball for the most part - making it harder than it should be to nail the big-ticket targets during your manually-steered second stroke, called a smashbreaker.
It also doesn’t help that the camera’s stubborn refusal to tilt along the Y-axis adds unnecessary guesswork to dropping the ball into the hole from the air.
Another problem that rears its ugly head all too often (and not just in this game) is the wildly unpredictable physics engine. Often, you could fluke your way through an entire room and smash your way to a Platinum medal, while other times you could drive a laser guided missile only to watch it haplessly bounce around between a couple of objects in an infinite loop until you restart the level.
Dangerous Golf is certainly a quick fix if you are looking for some destructive fun, but beware of some fairly heavy repetition and unpredictable physics mechanics.