Mario Golf arrived today! So only a day late — I was also podcasting for the first part of the day, so it didn't even matter that it didn't show up until mid-afternoon.
I've spent a few hours with it this evening and I'm enjoying it a lot. I particularly like how it's deliberately not trying to just do the same thing as it has done in the past — notably, it's tweaked the control scheme quite a bit from the classic "three-tap" system that previous entries in the series have used, and the new "speed golf" mechanics are super cool.
I'll talk more about the details of all this on Rice next week when I write something more in-depth, but for now, the main difference in the controls is that there's no "accuracy" tap when you're taking your swing. Instead, there are now a couple of factors in play. Once you've pressed the button once and again a second time to set power (optionally choosing to add topspin or backspin at this point depending on which button you use) the meter takes a second "swing", and during that time you can use the analogue stick to "curve" your shot.
Nothing unusual there… until you discover that golfers with better "spin" stats can actually curve their shots multiple times in different directions, allowing you to, say, curve the ball around a tree that's in the way and then bend it back in the opposite direction to get it back on course. Realistic? Probably not, but it's an interesting mechanic that works well with Mario Golf's cartoony, arcadey gameplay.
The other thing I've found interesting is the number of variations on golf that the game's "Adventure" mode provides you with. On the first course, you play pretty straightforward golf, but by the time you get to the second one you're challenged to play "cross-country golf", which tasks you with sinking the ball on a set number of holes within a limited total number of shots. And just to be awkward, this course has enormous changes in elevation with cliffs and valleys, requiring you to make use of "tornadoes" to move both you and your ball to different "levels" of the course. It's a really clever and creative use of the golf mechanics to create quite a different feeling game experience.
The third course that I've just got you challenges you to full-on Speed Golf, where you are ranked more on how quickly you got to the hole (and your number of putts) than actually how many shots you took. And there are still some other variations I'm yet to discover; "Battle Golf" sounds particularly interesting, and is teased in the game's intro sequence. (You can also play it as a one-off game right away, but I've been ploughing through Adventure mode, as it seems you unlock a bunch of stuff through that.)
Anyway, early impressions are very good, and I'll doubtless spend some more time with it in the next few days. Watch out for a full write-up on Rice Digital very soon!
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