JN6 still has a very active community out there playing leagues and designing courses.
Take a look at The Golden Bears Den. That site hosts course designs and leagues.
I remember visiting Access Software in the mid-90s and the CEO was hand-tweaking tree graphics for Links 386…
Awesome.
Yeah I was a huge Links 386 Pro fan back in the day. Every time a new course would come out I would be out to the local EB to pick it up. I still have a case with all of the original floppies of the first sets of courses around here somewhere. I still have vivid memories of playing tournaments over modem on the Links Tour. That was awesome although a bit expensive ;).
I’ve been waiting forever for a great, realistic golf game for the PC. Links LS was the last for sure. That being said, the Hot Shots games for PS3 are excellent games. They take into account wind, lie and lie angle, weather and are pretty good with shot difficulty. Bunker play is a huge weakness, but other than that I think hot shots is a better game than the old Links LS was just because of how far the physics has come. The courses are very well designed with a good balance on risk/reward.
A real PC golf game with proper physics and a course creator, that would be a day one purchase for me. I can’t wait to make West Pubnico Golf and Country Club. I won’t put in the opaque clouds of blackflies in the spring though :)
Giantbomb QL of The Golf Club. This is actually looking really good.
I’ve seen a few videos of it. Once its finished I think it will be quite good, and I look forward to creating and sharing courses.
It’s pretty solid already, even at this stage of Early Access. I’m still trying to get used to the Course Creator though.
OOoo… links 386…so many hours. I had a friend who was on the PGA tour for a few years, and we used to golf in real life together quite often. We had many heated battles on links 386…such a great program, especially for the time. It really did have most of the mechanics of golf right.
Yes. Links 386 (and Links before it) were the staple on my hard drive and my true comfort game. Eventually everything started transitioning to some kind of motion-control swinging with the mouse, but I guess I’m just a lame old power-bar guy. You can put that on my gravestone.
Yeah, I picked The Golf Club up and it looks decent so far. I still feel it is quite a bit lacking compared to some of the features that Links LS had from '97 on, but time will tell if they get added in and if it improves. The ranking and tournament system seems promising, but I don’t like seeing other people’s shots/golf balls flying around when I am still “away”. Hopefully they allow a more traditional representation as it get developed more. I am still not sold on the swing system as I am also still in the click to swing camp, but will give it an honest try to see if I can get used to it. It is still really hard to control the types of shots you want to play and get finer control on the power you want. I have heard others say this is more like real golf, though, so maybe it will be a nice hard simulation that will improve with more practice.
I think the peak for me was back in Links '97 and playing ladder team games on Kali where there was actual alternate shot that followed proper rules of play order and we had some pretty intense matches back then. I remember one time holing out from a bunker on the last hole to win a match. There were many virtual high-fives going around then ;). I seem to recall our team name was the “Ball Busters” or something. Not sure why I remembered that just now, heh.
3 Click here as well. The funny thing is, the 3 click swing setup to me, is more like real golf, as it actually does recreate the mechanics of a swing and the bullet points. Golf is all a math problem really, and I got very very good at looking at 98% lie, 167 yards to the hole, 9 MPH wind, and a club that did 180 yards at 100% power. Oddly enough, I could actually do that quite well in real golf. You have a much better sense of what 90% power is when swinging a real golf club, than you do with the very limited travel and granularity of a controller or mouse.
Not having a 3 click option, is an instant no purchase for any golf game for me, it’s just that big of a deal breaker.
I guess I’m the weird outlier here. I feel the mechanic in The Golf Club is miles better than the 3-click method because it “feels” more like an actual swing.
Of course, there have been nothing but forum posts to the devs complaining about the lack of 3-swing, so I’m pretty sure that they’ll make it an option at some point.
Telefrog, can you describe the swing in Golf Club?
I actually like the 2 click system like Links used to have where you click and hold until you have desired power, then click again at the bottom for accuracy. I must admit that I like to treat it more as a math problem too and when you cannot even come close to hitting the power you want it takes away from my enjoyment of a golf simulation.
I also agree that it can even translate to the course. I remember sinking some crazy putts at some of the nicer golf clubs one summer after playing a ton of Links the previous winter. I also had one of those infrared clubs that came out in the 90s and played many many rounds with it on Links 386 Pro one winter and the next spring I was hitting 200+ yard 4 irons dead straight and something I never could do before. I imagine once they get the simulation squared away they can add any number of input swing systems they like. I should dig that club out sometime, though, as I believe it had a serial port connection and see what sorts of data it puts out and make a little swing simulator in Game Maker or Dark Basic or something :).
You set the power by pulling back, set the loft, then you literally flick the stick forward for the “swing.” There is a pie-wedge that you have to keep the stick in to get the swing right. If the stick “swings” outside of the wedge, then your shot will fly left or right.
There are a bunch of shot aids that can make this very easy to hit, but removing them all makes it pretty challenging.
EDIT: Also, as an FYI for anyone looking to get this, the game doesn’t function offline. The courses are all stored on HB Studios’ server, so if you try to play it without an internet connection, no courses will show up.
Telefrog can explain it better than I, but the couple rounds I did play I used the mouse and it was moving the mouse straight back and then straight forward to swing. It seemed to perform better when you used a smooth, slow, rhythmic motion and think about the same sort of timing as if you were swinging a real club and it seemed to work pretty well. I had a hard time hitting it straight, though. You can also go into a fine tuning view of some sort (didn’t try this) where you can put more direct control of how you hit the ball (and influence the ball flight), but this also would reduce the window of an accurate shot making it harder to hit it properly.
I believe there may also be a mouse swing left to right and back to the left type of swing (this may be in or proposed to come soon), and many seem to like the controller support. I have yet to try that and maybe should next, but it doesn’t seem like it would work well to me. I am not a console guy at all and using an Xbox 360 controller analog stick is very uncomfortable for me.
Ha! I haven’t actually even tried this with a mouse. I guess I should check that out.
Nah, you’re not the only one. I definitely prefer it over 3-click. I feel I have much more control over the power with this method, and it feel more real to me because I feel it mimics the rhythm of the golf swing better.
The biggest problem I see is that it is way too easy to be accurate. But I think it’s just a problem with video game golf. I’ve never played a game where accuracy is realistic.
So why did Links and Jack Nicklous Go.f go out of business? I feel like when EA Slorts bought out PGA tour my love of PC. golf died thanks to the EA financial model sucking the fun out of games.
The Golf Club officially launches on August 19th.
Edit: It’s a little disappointing as-is. (I doubt it will change much between now and launch.) There’s no career. No AI to play against. You either play others online or play against ghost shots from other people’s performance on the same course.