What the hell is wrong with me?
I've played PGA 2K. I've played Hot Shots Golf, Everybody's Golf, whatever you'd wanna name it. I've played Links, Golf Story, Golf With Your Friends, Worms Golf, Wii Sports Golf, Flappy Golf, etc. I'm not a huge golf fanatic but I never seem to pass up any video game adaptation of the one sport I think probably shouldn't exist in real life in the capacity it is. I loathe golf's existence in the real world. I hate its tedium. I hate the concept of needing to have a caddy and having to travel via a dumb cart across shots and holes. I hate the impact the sport has had over our own ecology, the destruction of lands and habitats that had to be made to create a sport that's really only enjoyed by those rich enough to play it. And yet ironically, condensed into video game format I can get addicted.
But I've never played a Mario Golf game before. I never really had the opportunity to come across any edition of the titles until Mario Golf for the Nintendo 64 made its way onto the Switch. So why, with all the mild experience of golf games under my helm, did I get so obsessed with Mario Golf for the Nintendo 64? Why did I sink 25 hours into the main content, only unlocking just half of the content so far, in such a relative short amount of time?
I don't know.
But I've spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out why.
It's not like I actively avoided playing a Mario Golf game, but within minutes of playing I was absolutely entranced. Captivated. I think moreso than any other golf game except Links is there more information on the screen for you to read before making shots. The notion of analyzing the field around you and converting it into a game of number crunching and mathematics is why I find golf so entrancing in video game form, and does Mario Golf not only come in spades with numerical analysis, but it's also for some reason some of the most difficult golf I've played on a controller.
You're not on the PGA Tour fields, you're in the Mushroom Kingdom. You're not going to be swinging across plains and greenlands, you're going to be attempting maneuvers around green-checked canyons across fields of Koopa Shells across rows of islands, and it's going to take you a while to get comfy with your swings.
Mario Golf took forever for me to get sunk into despite being hooked from minute one. Mario Golf, similarly to Everybody's Golf, has such an addictive push/pull with its difficulty. At first glance, pars are unrealistic, you're far along behind leaderboards, somehow other CPUs have the lead with -7 and you're struggling with a +4 on the 7th hole. By the time you decide it's not right to give up after just starting you already feel yourself getting better. You finish the cup in last place. You get 6 exp. You try it again. You finish in third this time. You get 30 exp. You try one more time. First place. 76 exp. You unlock the next cup. Last place. 6 exp. The cycle begins again.
Every venture into new ground feels like completely relearning the game, uncommon for golf games in general but pulled off to immaculate success here. Except you won't always be pushing into new ground, because content unlocks are slow as all fuck. It still took me three tournament plays to unlock the next cup. With roughly 30-45 minutes taken per play, it took me almost two hours to unlock the next set of 18 holes with my 50 exp accumulated (as exp is your means of unlocking courses.) It takes 300 exp to unlock the third course. 1000 for the fourth. 1500 for the fifth. 2200 for the last. After 25 hours I'm halfway to unlocking the fifth.
You'll be at the peak of your game inbetween these valleys of unlocks frequently, so what can you do with your excess skill? You can go for character unlocks, where you play one-on-one in a stroke game with a character up for grabs if you can beat them. Except oh boy, these unlockable character matches are home to some of the nastiest cheating cunts I've ever had to deal with, and I've played Mario Kart 64 throughout my life. Since these unlockables always possess higher stats than any other character you have in your roster up to that point (which means, yes, there is insane power creep), you'll get absolutely crushed by some scrimblo bastard who can swing 40yds farther than your strongest owned character. There are instances, particularly in the case of unlocking Wario, where these unlocks are so much higher in stats that you can throw statistically the best game possible and still lose. It genuinely comes down to if the CPU decides to fuck up or not. It's a deterrent to the average player, but somehow had the opposite effect on me; I became so fixated on playing as good as possible that I had no problem playing against Wario 11 times before he decided to fuck up enough for me to win. I finally got Wario, and now I can't beat this next guy because I'm in the same situation again. Insane power creep, insane demand for perfection, but it will never not stop being fun to analyze and crunch every single number on screen and make the most ridiculous shots you've ever seen.
Mario Golf turned me into a sick person, obsessed with a desire to get better, to play perfectly, to beat everyone despite the pleading of my friends to "Please Just Play Something Else". It's obscenely difficult at times, and content is dripfed to ridiculous amounts, which only fuels my obsessive need to grind my skill. And whether or not the day comes that I finally unlock everything this game has to offer me or I give up and play for the final time... I don't know. Nintendo release another Mario Strikers game please it's been like 15 years
I've played PGA 2K. I've played Hot Shots Golf, Everybody's Golf, whatever you'd wanna name it. I've played Links, Golf Story, Golf With Your Friends, Worms Golf, Wii Sports Golf, Flappy Golf, etc. I'm not a huge golf fanatic but I never seem to pass up any video game adaptation of the one sport I think probably shouldn't exist in real life in the capacity it is. I loathe golf's existence in the real world. I hate its tedium. I hate the concept of needing to have a caddy and having to travel via a dumb cart across shots and holes. I hate the impact the sport has had over our own ecology, the destruction of lands and habitats that had to be made to create a sport that's really only enjoyed by those rich enough to play it. And yet ironically, condensed into video game format I can get addicted.
But I've never played a Mario Golf game before. I never really had the opportunity to come across any edition of the titles until Mario Golf for the Nintendo 64 made its way onto the Switch. So why, with all the mild experience of golf games under my helm, did I get so obsessed with Mario Golf for the Nintendo 64? Why did I sink 25 hours into the main content, only unlocking just half of the content so far, in such a relative short amount of time?
I don't know.
But I've spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out why.
It's not like I actively avoided playing a Mario Golf game, but within minutes of playing I was absolutely entranced. Captivated. I think moreso than any other golf game except Links is there more information on the screen for you to read before making shots. The notion of analyzing the field around you and converting it into a game of number crunching and mathematics is why I find golf so entrancing in video game form, and does Mario Golf not only come in spades with numerical analysis, but it's also for some reason some of the most difficult golf I've played on a controller.
You're not on the PGA Tour fields, you're in the Mushroom Kingdom. You're not going to be swinging across plains and greenlands, you're going to be attempting maneuvers around green-checked canyons across fields of Koopa Shells across rows of islands, and it's going to take you a while to get comfy with your swings.
Mario Golf took forever for me to get sunk into despite being hooked from minute one. Mario Golf, similarly to Everybody's Golf, has such an addictive push/pull with its difficulty. At first glance, pars are unrealistic, you're far along behind leaderboards, somehow other CPUs have the lead with -7 and you're struggling with a +4 on the 7th hole. By the time you decide it's not right to give up after just starting you already feel yourself getting better. You finish the cup in last place. You get 6 exp. You try it again. You finish in third this time. You get 30 exp. You try one more time. First place. 76 exp. You unlock the next cup. Last place. 6 exp. The cycle begins again.
Every venture into new ground feels like completely relearning the game, uncommon for golf games in general but pulled off to immaculate success here. Except you won't always be pushing into new ground, because content unlocks are slow as all fuck. It still took me three tournament plays to unlock the next cup. With roughly 30-45 minutes taken per play, it took me almost two hours to unlock the next set of 18 holes with my 50 exp accumulated (as exp is your means of unlocking courses.) It takes 300 exp to unlock the third course. 1000 for the fourth. 1500 for the fifth. 2200 for the last. After 25 hours I'm halfway to unlocking the fifth.
You'll be at the peak of your game inbetween these valleys of unlocks frequently, so what can you do with your excess skill? You can go for character unlocks, where you play one-on-one in a stroke game with a character up for grabs if you can beat them. Except oh boy, these unlockable character matches are home to some of the nastiest cheating cunts I've ever had to deal with, and I've played Mario Kart 64 throughout my life. Since these unlockables always possess higher stats than any other character you have in your roster up to that point (which means, yes, there is insane power creep), you'll get absolutely crushed by some scrimblo bastard who can swing 40yds farther than your strongest owned character. There are instances, particularly in the case of unlocking Wario, where these unlocks are so much higher in stats that you can throw statistically the best game possible and still lose. It genuinely comes down to if the CPU decides to fuck up or not. It's a deterrent to the average player, but somehow had the opposite effect on me; I became so fixated on playing as good as possible that I had no problem playing against Wario 11 times before he decided to fuck up enough for me to win. I finally got Wario, and now I can't beat this next guy because I'm in the same situation again. Insane power creep, insane demand for perfection, but it will never not stop being fun to analyze and crunch every single number on screen and make the most ridiculous shots you've ever seen.
Mario Golf turned me into a sick person, obsessed with a desire to get better, to play perfectly, to beat everyone despite the pleading of my friends to "Please Just Play Something Else". It's obscenely difficult at times, and content is dripfed to ridiculous amounts, which only fuels my obsessive need to grind my skill. And whether or not the day comes that I finally unlock everything this game has to offer me or I give up and play for the final time... I don't know. Nintendo release another Mario Strikers game please it's been like 15 years