The Everybody’s Golf series has been a reliable companion franchise for PlayStation for almost three decades. Gamers have been taking to the greens to swing their virtual golf clubs away ever since the franchise’s inception in 1997, and continues to go strong through the years, evolving and enhancing its handicap with each passing console generation.
The latest entry, Everybody’s Golf: Hot Shots, is a fusion of the PAL version’s name Everybody’s Golf, along with North America’s alternative name sake for the series Hot Shots, and thus this harmonious blending brings together both names into one game. Not only this, but the original developer of Everybody’s Golf Claphanz is out, and a new team Hyde are in, so there are plenty of expectations to meet as they take aim and drive the latest entry down the fairway.
Does Hyde hit a Hole In One for the return of Everybody’s Golf, or will they need to pick the golf ball out of the wet stuff and retake their shot?
Everybody’s Golf: Hot Shots Review (PS5) Swinging For The Fences
Everybody’s Golf prides itself on its accessibility and cheeriness, and it’s lovely to know that the upbeat swagger has been retained with Hyde at the helm. Along with its shiny personality, Hot Shots caters for all kinds of players by including quickplay and party modes for more relaxed golfing sessions, co-op and online multiplayer so you can have fun with friends, and Challenge and World Tour modes to keep single-player enthusiasts happy. Tutorials are also provided if you’re a newcomer, so you won’t be hitting golf balls and becoming helplessly frustrated when a gust of wind sways your ball inches from the hole when you go in for a light putt.
At the start of your golfing journey in Everybody’s Golf: Hot Shots, you’re only able to play as two characters, but the roster can expand quickly the more time you invest in the game’s World Tour Mode.
The biggest modes in Hot Shots are reserved for single-player. Challenge Mode gives you plenty of golfing to tee-up on as you’ll proceed through sets of challenges, with each set geared towards a difficulty level. You start at Beginner level, and take on each tour packed with a handful of courses. Most of the tours are open from the off, so you can choose at your leisure without needing to feel the pressure to perform well. However, there is a rival you’ll be able to face off against if you keep on competing well and fill and Versus Meter. The higher you finish on a tour, the more the Versus Meter will fill with a green colour, and that means you’ll reach closer and closer to taking on the opponent for the difficulty level you’re on and face them in a one-on-one dual showdown.
The accommodating and gradual rise in difficulty makes Challenge Mode an easy way to test your golfing skills in Hot Shots, though more variety could’ve been utilized to keep players on their toes. When you play course after course of predictable golf, it can become quite monotonous. Hot Shots features various party-type modes, so why these weren’t incorporated in the Challenge Mode is anyone’s guess.
World Tour is a more relaxed offering, and featuring simple stories of the characters from the roster. World Tour is an inviting way to experience what Hot Shots has to offer, though it fails to excite because it goes through the same motions that the Challenge Mode does, in that you’re participating in tournaments and golfing through a range of courses with nothing that truly sets it apart and gives you further incentive to keep teeing off.
It’s Wacky Golf Time
If nothing else, both Challenge Mode and World Tour provide single-player sustenance, and although they’re both tailored towards arcade pick-up and play style golfing, neither are juiced up enough to captivate beyond their bounds. If you’ve played Everybody’s Golf before, Hot Shots is just more of it, but now on PlayStation 5.
The suite of party modes called Wacky Golf, do inject sweeter arcade sustenance and explosive unpredictability into Hot Shots……sometimes literally so too! There are 4 modes and all of them are bonkers.
Colorful makes every shot a surprise with tornadoes and other hazards changing the game and keeping golf unpredictable with numerous mods and perks to swing the advantage either for or against you; Scramble has you team up with another player in order to claim victory; Survival Golf is a competitive endeavour where you battle one-on-one to steal your opponent’s clubs if you outscore them on the course; and rounding out the modes is Boom Golf, where the golf course essentially becomes an unpredictable minefield that causes explosions which could either help or hinder yours and your opponent’s game.
These Wacky Golf modes are definitely more enjoyable than both the Challenge Mode and World Tour, as they allow golf to be more incendiary and exciting. As for the best mode of the bunch, it has to be Boom Golf because it’s sorta like Three Field Entertainment’s Dangerous Golf, but instead of the Burnout racing game inspiration and the ball wreaking havoc, it’s what lies in the grass that causes the explosive fun. The other modes are good, although Colorful does make things a bit too hectic to the point its more of a hindrance than an enjoyable inclusion.
Loyal To A Fault?
What does feel very refreshing though, is you have to unlock a lot of content to feel a true sense of progression, a far cry from modern games giving you too much content from the get-go. Basically, Hot Shots says balls to the new way, you gotta unlock the good stuff by playing the game and enjoying the modes. Unique golf balls, clubs and caddies can be unlocked by experiencing Hot Shots, though you’ll need to grind through tournaments and maxing out the game’s loyalty system to garner all the rewards.
Loyalty in Hot Shots is essentially a mechanism whereby the more you use a caddie, the more he/she levels up, and your familiarity with them yields rewards. There are 50 levels of loyalty with each caddie, which is way too much for the average player’s repetition tolerance. Ok, so you can unlock special shots with persistent loyalty levelling, but it’s clear that Hot Shots is padding out its worthwhile content under a grind-laden fairway adorned with rustling grasses, picturesque views, and bodies of water that force you to take shots with caution.
Crazy Characters In This Crazy Golf Game
On the subject of caution, watch out for Hot Shots’ cheery characters, their cute onomatopoeic expressions and their loud exclamatory remarks are as energetic and annoyingly repetitive as ever. Though they appear cutesy and quirky, the characters in Hot Shots are uncomfortably simplistic and don’t seem to be aware of what lips are like when they’re closed.
Despite the characters in Hot Shots looking adorable and fizzing with giggly enthusiasm, they’re irritably cliched and over-simplified. For example, the already-unlocked girl golfer Aile is both endearingly naive and perniciously teenage-like. She’s a former cheerleader, and you wouldn’t be surprised by this because her voice is very lively and effervescent like a white bellbird.
Conversely, the introductory boy character Mizuki is both eerily depressing and reminiscent of a typical JRPG character. He always shouts “just like always!” Which doesn’t mean very much when he plays because he doesn’t say this when he’s losing a game, he’ll say it when he’s about to tee-off.
There are 25 total characters to unlock with their various strengths, weaknesses, personalities and foibles. It’s discouraging that you have to unlock the vast majority of the roster, but persistent play pays off, and Hot Shots does incentivize you to keep playing to unlock everything, although the game’s methods when it comes to this aren’t very exciting.
Teeing Off With Tantalizing Tenacity
On the golf course, Hot Shots is very similar to other Everybody’s Golf games. You take shots using a meter, and tap the same action button twice to dictate how powerful your shots will be. If powerful enough, they should hit the fairway with graces, but if not then you’ve probably flumped your shot and need to take a better swing.
Nothing is as deflating in Everybody’s Golf than thwaking your shot, only for the ball to travel as far as a bowling ball if it was thrown by a small child. To avoid this, you need to tee-off with as much power as you can, and subsequent shots should be aimed towards the flag icon on your meter to align your ball closer to the flag where the hole is.
Of course you need to be well aware of the variables including the wind, the weather, the environmental hazards, and the amount of spin on the ball. To mitigate wind, weather and environmental concerns, you can utilize ball spin to alleviate the adverse effects the elements may throw your way.
The same goes for lining up your putts on the green, where the wind and slope types can drastically alter the behaviour of the ball. Uphill slopes require more speed to battle the resistance of the upward trajectory, and downhill slopes will encourage careful club taps.
Your options on the golf course, as well as the trickiness of the variables provide a balanced experience to every golf game regardless of difficulty. The gameplay is certainly satisfying, though if you’re new you might just be content with whacking the ball anywhere that gets you closer to the hole-but if you’re finding that your scores are too often resulting in Bogeys or below, then the tutorials will provide you with many lessons to hone your skills to give you more confidence where you need it.
Rough Around The Edges
The presentation in Everybody’s Golf: Hot Shots is hit and miss. The graphics and the various regions aren’t all that appealing or majestic, and textures can look butt-ugly. Honestly, you could mistaken Hot Shots for a PS3 game because it really isn’t much of a looker. In terms of audio, the voices given to the characters are grating, but on the plus side, the soundtrack is pleasantly upbeat and gives you a splendid array of tunes to listen to as you golf.
You may have waited 8 years since the last proper Everybody’s Golf game, but Everybody’s Golf: Hot Shots has landed to remind you to take up your clubs and get swinging again. If you’ve loved previous Everybody’s Golf titles, Hot Shots is a pleasant entry that gives you plenty to unlock and plenty of golf to get stuck into. However, while it’s great to be incentivized to unlock rewards in Hot Shots, the grind can be too much to contend with.
On top of this, the visuals and general look of the game isn’t appealing, and the characters and their dialogue are super-generic. None of these dings should be enough to stop you from wanting to play Hot Shots, but there is definite room for improvement. Hot Shots is ultimately worthy of your investment, but this isn’t a Hole In One, an Eagle, an Albatross, a Birdie, and it’s not even a Par-it’s a Bogey……just not the disgusting type.
Everybody’s Golf: Hot Shots is out now on PS5, Nintendo Switch and PC.
Review copy kindly provided by the publisher.