In the ungodly hours of Tuesday morning, during Sony’s Tokyo Game Show press conference, Clap Hanz revealed its much lauded Minna no Golf (Hot Shots Golf), with the prefix “new”, for PlayStation 4. Dating back to the PlayStation One, the Hot Shots Golf, or Everybody’s Golf, franchise has been extremely popular worldwide due to taking a very dull sport and adding a massive wallop of wonderful charm and brilliant, quirky gameplay.
Generally, a Hot Shots Golf game has been released on a Sony platform shortly or at the same time of its release, however with nothing in the last year being mentioned for the PS4 (since TGS 2014) I was worried about never seeing this game again. Thankfully I’m wrong !
So,what did we learn from the announcement video?
Hot Shots Golf is well known for its lobbies where you, and others, are based in an interactive chatroom while you choose a tournament to enter. The best thing about the chatrooms is that you have your own avatars that you can walk around various buildings, and inside these buildings are small activities that you’re able to waste your time on while waiting for a tournament to start.
In the announcement video it seems as though Clap Hanz has taken this a step further by potentially allowing players to be in the crowd watching games while waiting for a tournament to begin. Either that or it will be similar to how it’s currently set up. It seems most likely that the developer has taken this a step further by giving the lobbies a PlayStation Home feel. With Clap Hanz making a PlayStation Home lobby on PS3, I would not be surprised if they took what they learnt from Sony’s community hub and applied it to the new iteration. It was a fantastic implementation which unfortunately wasn’t used much as PlayStation Home was dying off.
A huge plus now seems to be that you can take your avatars onto the green instead of using pre-made characters. Thankfully, the game still appears to have oodles of charm and it looks like the overall design might have been taken a step further. Hot Shots Golf has always been renowned for its wacky and charming characters and breathing that into your custom characters can bring about a rather addicting affair.
Personally I’ll be creating some normal characters, but I’m sure some people out there will make some outrageous characters with great big bushy pink afros! The potential customisation of characters is there to be exploited and I hope that Clap Hanz gives us the opportunity to really make the playing experience that much more enjoyable.
There wasn’t anything shown in terms of courses or gameplay elements unfortunately, but Hot Shots Golf is set to be released sometime in 2016 so there’s still plenty of time for the Japanese developer to show us some gameplay. Frankly I can’t wait!