Originally posted August 18th 2015 on the Seafoam Gaming forums

Title: Endless Golf

System: Wii U (eShop)

Price: $1.99

Release date: 07/30/2015

The main game/story

According to the game’s description, Endless Golf is intended to be a fun and simple game for those who don’t care about winning or losing, where you shoot balls into the golf holes over and over again, all throughout time with no limits whatsoever. Well, it certainly gets the job done, although it seems like they overdid the whole endless aspect of it…

Graphics

An incredibly simplistic 2D art style is all you’ll see in this game. That’s not always a bad thing considering how some of the most addicting mobile golf games use a similar art style, but it does feel very underwhelming to play with extremely simple backgrounds when there’s no charm behind it at all.

Music and Sound:

Honestly, I can’t say much of anything here at all in this category, mainly because there is no music whatsoever. While I do think that some of the other simple games I’ve played in the past with only one song have suffered due to said themes becoming incredibly irritating after a while, this game is completely silent for the most part, with not even background ambience to help out. The only sound effects you’ll hear in the game are the sound effects for hitting the ball, getting it in the hole, moving onto the next stage and going out of bounds, which is incredibly boring to hear after a good amount of time clearing these holes. Even if music wouldn’t have been necessary, would a simple wind ambience sound effect be too much to ask?

Gameplay

Just like the title says, it’s Endless Golf, where the holes continue after you complete eighteen of them, and pretty much never stop after that point. It’s very easy and simple to control, using the Wii U Gamepad and the stylus to aim and shoot the white golf ball towards the hole on the same screen, and that’s all you do. Each level is randomly generated, but when the only major differences are the appearance of some bumps and hills here and there, it’s incredibly underwhelming and boring. No sand traps, no rough patches of grass, no water hazards, just green hills that never end with a difficulty level that’s all over the place. One hole could be an incredibly straight line from the golf ball to the hole, or a course with several mountains that are tricky to get across. Either way, the game is still incredibly easy once you learn how the controls work, and with the lack of variety Endless Golf is pretty much a game that suffers from being too simple.

Now of course you could say that the always changing score could add challenge or replay value to the game, but it doesn’t even do that, with the total score being displayed in the top left corner for curiosity purposes only. No matter how many times you shoot the ball off screen it never gives you any penalty except for a higher score number, meaning it’s impossible to lose. While the developer definitely did have this in mind when developing the game, the fact that there’s no way to lose means the game never ends, true to the title. This means you can never share your “high score” for this game because of how it means absolutely nothing if you can’t finish the game, unless you set your own challenges, but that leads to the auto-save issue. After a certain amount of holes the game will auto save, allowing you to pick up where you left off, but without the ability to play from the very beginning without deleting the save data. This lack of any sort of satisfaction from an overly simplistic concept is what really hurts the game, as with some added things like a “three misses and you start from the beginning, see how far you can go” mode it could have been a decent high-score game for the eShop.

Conclusion

In conclusion, while I definitely could see the point the developer was hoping to make with this game, I feel that the design flaws and the $2 price tag bring this title down tremendously, making it near impossible to recommend. While it is simple and easy to play, it may be just a bit too simple to have any sort of replay value, as just like the title promises, you’ll be shooting golf balls into holes forever and ever, until you get bored or tired of this game. There’s pretty much nothing I can really say about this game that’s positive, which is very unfortunate as I really did try my best to see the good in this game, being the high-score nut and golf fan I am. If the game were perhaps 50 cents or a low price like that, then I could possibly see this as a decent game for passing the time, but for $1.99, the same price tag as other great games like Toki Tori and EDGE with a ton of content to offer and lots of replay value, Endless Golf is pretty much not worth the price, especially for a game that’s on a console when the main focus would be better suited for the handheld market.

I give Endless Golf a 1 out of 10, and for the reasons I stated above, I honestly think it’s a game that you should skip.