Eagle Eye Golf review

The buzz word with simulation golf games at the moment is control. Each game or series seems to be vying for the most realistic control method that allows for maximum control and involvement with the club and the way you pull off a shot. Eagle Eye Golf plumps for a mixture of EA’s pull down on the analogue stick and flick forward method and the more arcade style shot meter along the bottom of the screen, seen in Mario Golf and Everybody’s Golf.

To take a shot, it’s relatively simple, although surprisingly hard to master the technique. Along the bottom of the screen is a meter, marked with various distances. Line up your shot and pull back on the right analogue stick. Hold it down until the meter fills up to the desired distance, and then flick the analogue stick up.

Now, this is where it gets tricky: in order to pull off a successful shot, when flicking the analogue stick up you have to ensure that you flick it straight, and that it doesn’t veer off to the left or right. A small radar-like display shows you the amount of leeway you have, along with a line that tracks the straightness of your flick. If you move outside of the highlighted area, your shot will sail off into the rough or out of bounds. Ratings ranging from bad to excellent are displayed when you take a shot, and spin can be applied at any time during the process.

When putting, control’s essentially the same, albeit without the risk of messing up a shot, as there’s no punishment for moving the analogue in a less than straight line. It might all sound horribly complicated, but it’s a lot more simple in practise than the game’s manual, or indeed I, can describe. Mastering the control method is absolutely vital for getting anywhere in this game, and while it might take a few rounds, it will come in time. The beauty of this method is that it means you can’t just coast through a round pulling off perfect shots every time, à la Tiger Woods PGA Tour, without really concentrating on each and every attempt. It’s also easier to judge distance than in the Tiger Woods games. However, you still don’t feel quite as involved as you do in EA’s game, because it just doesn’t feel like a real shot.

Eagles? Not Likely

Once you’ve got your head (and hands) around the control method, you can start trying to progress through the game’s tournaments. Single rounds, an addictive mission mode and multiplayer are all available, but the tournaments are the real meat of the game. Either choose one of the game’s built-in characters or create your own, using the severely lacking create-a-character mode. With only a few variations on faces, clothes and hair styles, this is quite a poor effort, and doesn’t hold a candle to other games’ create modes.

Amateur competitions are the first port of call and, refreshingly, are quite challenging. The control method, along with wind conditions, plenty of bunkers and other hazards, combine to make sure that no round is ever overly easy, unlike a certain PGA-licensed game.

As you progress you can unlock items that will improve your game, such as clubs, balls and shoes, and develop rivalries with CPU characters. The aforementioned mission mode provides a welcome and enjoyable distraction from the pressure of tournaments, putting you in some challenging scenarios. It’s addictive and fun to play through, and with one hundred missions, it will keep you occupied for a while.

Another feature that adds seemingly endless replay value to the game is the course creator. This allows you, as the name suggests, to create your own course from scratch, tinkering with all aspects of it. This means fairways, greens, bunkers, tees, hazards and more. With some time investment, there’s potential for plenty more rounds once you’ve played the game’s seven courses to death.

Bogey On Down

Despite the game’s yearning to be the most realistic out there, there are some aspects that really aren’t helping it achieve this. For a start, the visuals are the wrong side of cartoony, looking more like Everybody’s Golf than the more realistic golf games already on the market. The characters don’t help either, reverting to the use of stereotypes and novelty characters rather than more realism-based golfers. Unintentionally hilarious voice acting is evident with some of them too, namely the obligatory Japanese schoolgirl. Add in some horribly repetitive music that plays incessantly on every hole of each course, and the game starts to seem more like a quirky Japanese take on golf than a game with realism in mind.

Obviously with Electronic Arts holding the PGA licence, having more realistic courses, players and tournaments are harder to pull off, and with EA recently extending its contract with said licence, this seems likely to continue.

So, is Eagle Eye Golf the definitive simulation it claims to be? The control method is an interesting take on the usual styles, and helps make things challenging, like real golf. The realistic weather effects and environmental hazards, and the way the golf balls react on different surfaces is also like real golf and helps add to the realism.

But the tiresome characters, laughable, slightly muffled voice acting and other aesthetic traits of the game detract from any real authenticity. So the answer is no, it’s not the definitive simulation. Eagle Eye Golf is enjoyable and challenging however, and worth seeking out if you’re a fan of other golf games.