Mini Golf: 99 Holes

Golf requires a fair amount of commitment. You need a pair of beige slacks and an Argyle Sweater for a start, and surely those golf buggies need some sort of licence before you can drive them. Then there's the commitment of paying a golf club a lot of money to lose a lot of balls somewhere in the rough patches between their lovingly maintained greens.

So it's lucky for those of us lacking that sort of dedication that the game of mini golf exists - or crazy golf if you want to make it sound a bit more common. Anyhow, it's the sort of game that has holes you don't have to walk a mile to reach, throws in quirky obstacles for those suffering from short attention spans, as well as involving its players in snooker-style reflection shots.

And this is the exactly the sort of golf game you get with Digital Chocolate's Mini Golf: 99 Holes. The publisher has already given us various themes on mini golf in the past, with Las Vegas and castles-themed games. This time the hook is a bit less flashy and slot machine-centric and more substantial. What you get are 99 holes to play - all very different and spread across 11 courses, set mostly in parks, forests and other green expanses.

As with those previous games, Mini Golf: 99 Holes is easy to pick up. You move your player left and right depending on where you want to hit the ball and hold '5' to build up the power gauge that determines how hard you hit it. You can also heighten and lower the camera to get an overview of the course or a better view for putting. It's simple but it's all you would want or need for a game of mini golf.

The game's depth lies is in each of its courses however. While they start out fairly straightforward they soon become less like a game of golf and more like a level from a Tomb Raider game. Obstacles lie in wait everywhere - magnets drag your ball towards them, fans blow it away, conveyor belts carry it up ramps and springs fire it into oblivion. As well as getting your ball in the final hole, there are coins to collect for bonus points. In many of the later holes you get a choice of two paths - one to go for the 1000 point-scoring hole-in-one or the one which makes those points up in coins.

Visually, Mini Golf is quite accomplished. Your golfer is fully 3D modelled as are the courses. The backgrounds are a bit on the sparse side but everything that matters is nicely animated.

Really though what makes Mini Golf as good as it is are the ball physics, which feel spot on. You can ricochet your ball off walls at varying angles and smack it hard enough to fly across the course and it always goes where you'd expect it to. With physics this solid, controls this simple and such a generous number of holes, the most important aspects of a good golf game are completely fulfilled.

There's also a two player mode so you can compete across nine holes of a course, taking turns to see who can score highest.

Mini Golf doesn't feel particularly fresh and exciting, but just by giving the player 99 new holes and sticking with simple and effective controls, it delivers a massively addictive experience. And one that doesn't require you to go out and buy some white spiked shoes and a single all-weather glove either.