Well, I’m not full of praise for Golf Club Wasteland, but I’ve just spent 40 minutes playing it and here are my thoughts for what they’re worth.
The first three levels teach you basically how to play, then you’re asked to choose between story mode (no penalties), challenge mode wherein you have to make at least par on each level, and a hardcore mode I didn’t look at.
I started on challenge mode and made steady but often frustrating progress. The game is all over the place, really. I swear the shot power indicator isn’t linear even though it looks like it should be; a half power lob will hit the ball no higher than your own head, while a full power lob will hit it over small buildings. Similarly, the level design is incredibly uneven. A lot of the shots you need to make are not only very easy but also come with built-in bumpers and barriers to ensure even a bad shot isn’t a total disaster. But sprinkled in with these are some ridiculous shots you need to make, like hitting a ball into a small pipe from a good distance away, which coupled with the fairly awkward control system means you rely more on luck than skill in many instances.
It’s a shame because the rest of the game is lovely. The graphics are pretty and understated, with some nice animations in the background that enhance and never distract. The music - you listen to a radio station throughout the game - is a highlight for me, being a combination of ambient to soft, dreamy rock, reminiscent of the Surviving Mars radio stations. Interspersed with the songs are the ramblings of a DJ whose voice I swear I’ve heard before, and people calling into the station to relate tales of their respective lives on Earth before the…whatever…happened and banished everyone to Mars.
It’s a nice experience which is marred by the golf rather than enhanced by it, at least in my opinion - although take the golf out and you’d just have a walking simulator (probably one of the better ones though).
Ultimately the level design of the golf lets the game down. There are far too many instances of almost pixel-perfect shots needed to progress, and the game can be very punishing if you miss certain shots, almost in a Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy way (never quite that bad though). About half way through the game’s 35 levels I switched to story mode in a rage, but it didn’t really help matters much. Walking simulators shouldn’t make you angry, but this one was starting to, and it was distracting me from the rest of the experience.
Verdict: mildly disappointing, but a relatively unique and sometimes gorgeous experience. I might actually go back and finish it, maybe one level per session at a time! Is the current price worth it? Yeah…just.
