Simulated Golfing

In my previous post I speculated on how entertaining it might be to practice golfing with the new Nintendo Revolutions wireless controller. That very weekend, my boyfriend's flatmate went out and bought Real World Golf for the PS2, and the Game Trak system entirely of his own accord, so we spent most of Sunday faux-golfing.

It's not great, particularly at £50 (£29.99 game + £19.99 Game Trak). The Game Trak thing works by connecting retracting strings from the base box to specially-made gloves with clips. They're not as intrusive as you think, but you have to play with this tiny 12-inch plastic golf club in order to get your grip right and it's really hard to be consistent, since you can't really line up the "club" against your imaginary "ball". Maybe if you're a real golfer you already know how far out your hands should be, but me? Haven't a clue. Also, if you swing hard it's easy to yank the base out of position and thus totally screw up your next swing, since the movement tracking is all relative to your initial calibration.

The Party Game section is quite fun but if you're as rubbish as me it rapidly gets exhausting. You can knock balls through giant floating hoops or balloons, or hit numbers on a fake dartboard. You have to be pretty bloody good to reach their target to unlock the 301 Darts, but that's fair enough coz at my level of inability I would probably never finish a round of 301 darts. Another thing was that my bf allegedly ;) never hooks the ball when he's playing in the actual real world, yet every shot he took flew off to the left on this thing. Either he was doing something really weird that he doesn't do in real golf, or it's over-sensitive to follow-through actions and bending your left elbow at the end of your follow-through sends it spinning off to the left. Very dubious.

A big issue is that you really need two Game Traks to play multiplayer - it would have been nice to provide two sets of gloves since the things aren't cheap at £20 each. Single-player is okay by yourself but quickly gets tedious for spectators. It's golf, after all.... and amateur, almost by definition.

I can think of much better ways to spend £50. Like adding to my PSP fund. Feel free to donate to my PayPal account ;)