Mario Golf: Super Rush
Switch
Plenty would argue that the Mario sports games’ N64 debuts were their peak and they haven’t reached the same level since, yet Camelot remains Nintendo’s go-to when it’s time for the plumber and his Mushroom Kingdom friends to hit the court or the links. With a few exceptions (such as Wii U’s painfully slender Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash), it has been a safe pair of hands, but it has let its normally reliable grip slacken and well and truly shanked this one.
It’s rare to play a Nintendo game that feels so fundamentally misguided. Outside a round of Standard Golf, the game’s big feature is that you play at the same time as your opponents. Once you’ve taken your swing, you grab your bag of clubs and run down the course while the ball is in mid-flight, avoiding other players and hazards along the way. The goal is obvious – to hurry the game along – yet there’s a stamina meter to manage, meaning you spend half your time at a gentle trot until the titular dash is available. This allows you to knock your opponents aside, or even displace their ball if you pass through it en route to your own.
True, this cuts down the waiting time between turns, particularly if you know someone who’s exasperatingly cautious over each stroke. In practice,
PUTTER ALONG
Adventure mode plays like a slightly truncated version of the RPG modes in previous handheld entries. You’ll play a variety of events to level up your Mii and boost their stats, including one that provides a narrative excuse to shake a leg: a desert course where the heat gradually dehydrates you. Though spoiled by the flawed aiming arc, the timed crosscountry mode is one of the few ideas that works, presenting a series of holes to complete in whichever order you choose. between rivals knocking you over and pace-sapping obstacles such as quicksand, this so-called ‘speed golf’ doesn’t feel much quicker than other golf games that warp you straight to your ball once it’s landed (not least since you still need to watch your opponents finish if you hole out first). It’s farcical that you can effectively ‘win’ a hole having taken more strokes than your opponent simply because you didn’t spend any time examining your lie or considering the wind. Shifting the focus onto boisterous, disruptive play – with special strokes designed solely to make things more difficult for the other players – feels profoundly unsportsmanlike for such a genteel, considered sport. Worse, you don’t even get a picture-in-picture view of your shot. When we chip in for an eagle and an albatross on the same round, we don’t get to see either, and there’s not even a replay option.
It’s one of several baffling oversights, along with the aiming trajectory failing to properly adjust to the loft of your chosen club, or the range finder to track course elevation being entirely unavailable in Speed Golf mode. A parade of Biddybuds being one of the main Mushroom Kingdom gimmicks on the fifth course, meanwhile, sums up the oddly drab presentation. We’ve resisted revising that Mark Twain quote so beloved of golf game reviewers, but can avoid it no longer: this, unfortunately, is a good sport spoiled.