A fantastic game butchered by hardware limitations.
In Dangerous Golf, you get a single whack at a golf ball in a small, enclosed space. Similar to the Burnout series's Crash Mode, your objective is to do as much monetary damage as possible starting with a single impact. The twist here is that you can control the spin/direction of the ball as it bounces around the room. If you breach a certain score threshold, you get a second wind for the ball, sending it rocketing through the room with more fury than before. Lastly, you get a single shot at the cup. The ball is guided toward the cup a bit here, so you're encouraged to do yet more damage by bouncing the ball across the walls, employing some Donald Duck Geometry.
Each level is short and sweet. I adore the gameplay here.
But the load times make it nearly unbearable. Starting a new level (or even just retrying the one you're already on) will hit you with a 30-60 second load time on XB1, every single time. It's tragic.
As of the original writing of this review (February 2020), the big feature that's being promised in the Xbox Series X and the PS5 is a solid state hard drive that will eliminate long load times as we know them. Until that day comes, I don't think Dangerous Golf is worth playing, because you legitimately will spend more time waiting than golfing right now. But if you pick up a Series X and you're looking for a smaller game to fill out your library, you go right ahead and treat that speed-loading supercomputer to some Dangerous Golf.
Update: I played it on PS5, and it was WAY better
In Dangerous Golf, you get a single whack at a golf ball in a small, enclosed space. Similar to the Burnout series's Crash Mode, your objective is to do as much monetary damage as possible starting with a single impact. The twist here is that you can control the spin/direction of the ball as it bounces around the room. If you breach a certain score threshold, you get a second wind for the ball, sending it rocketing through the room with more fury than before. Lastly, you get a single shot at the cup. The ball is guided toward the cup a bit here, so you're encouraged to do yet more damage by bouncing the ball across the walls, employing some Donald Duck Geometry.
Each level is short and sweet. I adore the gameplay here.
But the load times make it nearly unbearable. Starting a new level (or even just retrying the one you're already on) will hit you with a 30-60 second load time on XB1, every single time. It's tragic.
As of the original writing of this review (February 2020), the big feature that's being promised in the Xbox Series X and the PS5 is a solid state hard drive that will eliminate long load times as we know them. Until that day comes, I don't think Dangerous Golf is worth playing, because you legitimately will spend more time waiting than golfing right now. But if you pick up a Series X and you're looking for a smaller game to fill out your library, you go right ahead and treat that speed-loading supercomputer to some Dangerous Golf.
Update: I played it on PS5, and it was WAY better