Golf may well be the very definition of a game that’s simple conceptually, but exceptionally difficult to master. It’s this mixture of simplicity and challenge that makes golf games so captivating, once they get it right. Which Powerstar Golf does–mostly. There’s nothing revolutionary here, but Powerstar Golf is an absorbing game within the tradition of the new Shots Golf series, with some fun competitive features and a loot system that provides you enticing rewards to your progress, but is also stingy with the products.
When you first fan the flames of Powerstar Golf, you’ve access to simply two golfers and one course, the leisurely City Park. Each golfer has his or her own unique ability that may be used a collection variety of times in each event. Scientist Reiko Kobayashi’s Tesla field, for example, puts only a teensy little bit of magnetic pull at the hole, supplying you with a slight edge when putting, while retired astronaut Frank Weaver’s rocket launch ability lets him send balls flying farther than they’d otherwise. These characters and the others that you could unlock have a way sense and an angular look that make the sport feel as though it occurs in some idealized vision of the 1950s.
It’s at City Park that you simply learn the fundamentals–how swings are performed by tapping to begin, tapping again to set the swing’s power, and tapping one last time for accuracy. It is a straightforward way to swinging, and just tricky enough that nailing the ability and accuracy of a shot never stops feeling great. Simple because it is, though, it becomes quite complicated in case you realize it’s worthwhile to take factors like wind and terrain into consideration. It is your struggle against these factors that makes success at the links so satisfying, but Powerstar Golf doesn’t go far enough in helping you to appreciate the tools at your disposal. Brief tutorial videos introduce you to concepts like putting spin at the ball to curl your shot and to the properties of pitch shots and chip shots. But at no point does the sport illuminate the variation between a three wood and a 5 wood, or explain why it is advisable to use a 9 iron for certain shots and a 4 iron for others. Because the game doesn’t draw back from most of the complexities of real golf in its mechanics, it is a shame which you can’t say the identical concerning the tutorials.
Though the sport doesn’t go far enough in its efforts that will help you succeed at the golf course, it does make your successes, large and small, feel like a cause for celebration. On every shot you are taking, you’ll discover markers at the course indicating your previous personal best, in addition to the very best performances among your mates, or even the area record. The sport tracks such things as the longest drive, the nearest approach within 75 yards, and the nearest approach beyond 150 yards. And every time you beat your individual personal best for longest putt or the rest, the former marker in your performance vanishes and is replaced with a brand new one because the game celebrates your achievement. The sport finds little easy methods to make you are feeling good, even if you’re having a foul day at the course.
You do not know anguish until you get a triple bogey.
It’s at the green where most of your dreams are realized or shattered, where your heart sinks as an opportunity at a birdie becomes a double bogey after you miscalculate the left slope within the terrain or overcompensate for an uphill climb. But when the sport of golf (and of Powerstar Golf) couldn’t conjure such heartbreak, the victories wouldn’t be as sweet, and the trouble of putting properly signifies that in case you do sink that birdie from a distance, you are feeling like a champ.
As you play, you level up, unlocking new courses and new career events, though the method can take a little time. You will be wanting to see what challenges await within the lush Emperor’s Garden course or within the tropical and volcanic Burning Sands course if you are still stuck only gaining access to City Park and the autumnal Rocky Ridge. Leveling up isn’t enough, in and of itself, to get you access to additional golfers. For that, you must defeat each of them in career events on their home course, and these events can be devilishly difficult. Two-thirds of the game’s playable characters require you to win tough events before you can access them, and you might tire of playing those nine-hole contests over and over again in a bid to unlock them.
You can improve your performance with gear which you purchase using credits you earn during play, but you are able to’t just pick out a more precise putter or a more powerful set of irons. Instead, you buy packs that contain five items, and each item could be gear, or a onetime-use booster (a 20 percent boost to the experience you earn, for instance), or a new equippable perk for your caddie (a 50 percent chance for the ball to skip on the surface of a water hazard, perhaps), or even just a new outfit for a golfer or caddie. The element of chance makes it exciting to fork over your credits and see what you end up with, and the color coding of items in the green-blue-purple-orange tier system familiar from so many loot-driven role-playing games makes getting the rare, high-end stuff especially exciting.
To spend, or not to spend?
At least, until you rack up enough credits which you can buy packs guaranteed to contain nothing but orange-colored “extreme” gear. Acquiring that many credits, however, would take an extremely long time, given the slow pace at which the game doles them out. As it is, you can purchase a pack of blue “pro” gear after every few events and purple “elite” gear after every several, and there’s always a chance these packs will include a few items from the next tier up. But the game is just stingy enough about doling out credits to nudge you toward purchasing them with real money. This option isn’t yet active in the game’s online store, but there’s already a button prompt for it, so it’s likely coming very soon.
Thankfully, Powerstar Golf makes your time at the links enjoyable, even if you could have any interest in sinking money into microtransactions to get some extra goodies. This game covers well-trodden territory, however the way that it tracks your performance and the performance of your folks makes it an outstanding fit for the Xbox One’s launch lineup, and a nice option to spend a while. As long as your idea of pleasant doesn’t preclude the anguish which could include a missed putt or a miscalculated swing that sends your ball plummeting into the water.