Sid Meier's SimGolf

"Just throw it in the pile..."

First off, there are thousands of simulation games out there and not one has ever impressed me. Not even The Sims, The RCT series or other simulation/strategy games out there.

Gameplay: 2/10

Fairly exciting when you first play it. Lots of features and little tools to play around with. You will soon get bored of the game's interface and will run out of things to discover. I gave it a 2 because you actually get to play golf which is a bonus. However the golf is very unrealistic and the ball physics are poor. I enjoyed building my own courses in SandBox mode but I thought that the makers of the game could have given you the choice to buy a lot more land. As building 18 good holes becomes a challenge even on Sandbox mode. I think the buildings that you were allowed to build could have been used to interact with the game more but they left that little feature out. Overall it's just a regular Sim game which amazes you with it's original features for the first 2-3 days where you get up at 7 in the morning to play it and go to bed at 4 at night to keep playing. I've encountered millions of these games and this one is not an exception.

Graphics: 5/10

Decent graphics. Some nice locations with good realistic effects. Spoiled by very slow animation and ugly landscape but generally pleasent graphics. Nothing too high-tech and they could have done a bit more work. The trophy room looks silly because all the trophies look the same. Not much originality there. The buildings looked poor with a fex exceptions. The golf cart's movements were quite slick how they magically turned corners but that was just poor programming which Im taking well :)

Sound: 1/10

Rubbish! All you hear are groans or pleasent chatter, depending how good your course in and there is no actual game speech. Like the Sims the people in the game do not speak any kind of language but instead mumble stuff and you can see what they are talking about with a bubble over their head. The actual golfing sounds were quite realistic but I dont think realism is what this game is about so they dont really fit in.

Last Comment: I don't want you to think I am bashing the game, I just think they could have put a lot more effort into it. Being an EA game you expect graphics to be put over gameplay and this game follows that pattern. Don't buy it or even download it as it is a waste of HD space.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 04/04/03, Updated 04/04/03