Outlaw Golf 2

"A Solid and Fun M-Rated Golf Game"

Who would think that in this day and age you can actually get a pretty decent game for 20 bucks? Sega Sports ESPN series, Guilty Gear X2 #Reload, and many more seem to round it all out, now we can add Outlaw Golf 2 to the mix as well. Yes, it's not a perfect game by any means, and it's not for everyone. The M rating seems to tell all, though in reality this game is about as mature as South Park. Is that necessarily a bad thing? No, I find it's more of a good thing if anything, since we all need to laugh at something. This game takes golf in a whole different direction from either Tiger Woods or Hot Shots Golf, and instead tries to appeal to both the casual and hardcore golfer at the same time. Unlike some lame attempts made in the past, this one actually works in that it provides a solid game of golf, but at the same time has some hilarious commentary, and some unique options that make it one of a kind.

Gameplay: 9.5/10

Fun fun fun! There is some cool stuff that you can do, and eight different courses that you can play on, as opposed to the original's three. You can also earn tokens that allow you to play two unique aspects that I've not seen implemented into any other golf game to date. To access both of these aspects, you earn a token, press the Y button, and select either one of the two. The first one being the Golf Cart Course, where you drive a golf cart through an obstacle course, the second one Beat Up the Caddie is more about timing if anything, because you gotta hit the A button right when the fist reaches the Caddie's head icon in order to get a hit, the timing then gets a little faster every time you nail the hit, and in order to get a perfect, you have to hit this five times in a row. Both of these modes are fun, however, my favorite of the two is Beat Up the Caddie! Oh my God is it hilarious to kick your Caddie's ass, and see what happens, if you ever get this game use Summer and Autumn, you'll get to see a ton of action going on when you have Summer kick the living daylights out of Autumn.

Now some would ask why these two modes were implemented into the gameplay; let me explain. You see, there is yet another aspect that I didn't explain. One that is called "Composure", which is just what it says it is. When you get a good shot, your composure meter goes up, but when you get a bad one your composure meter goes down and along with it the amount of total distance you can shoot towards the hole. What Beat Up the Caddie, and the Golf Cart Course do is recover that composure so you can hit better, and also be more accurate with your shot.

Don't go thinking that this game is all about those two aspects though, because you're wrong. It's also about the golfing as well, and what is here is a solid and unique game. Playing it is kinda similar to Tiger Woods and Links on the fairway in that you press A, then hit down on the Analog stick, and up to swing the golf club; the slightest directional change can send the ball the wrong way, which is realistic in my books, but when you get to the green it's a different story. At first reading the greens can be quite intimidating if you don't know what you're doing. You have a set of crosshairs that you can move around to your heart's desire, but in order to get a forseeable course of where your ball is going to go, you can press X. However, you can only do this three times before you can't do it anymore. X accesses a Ghost Ball when you're on the fairway, but on the green it's the putt reader, and getting a putt in can be quite difficult without it, though it can be done. All in all, once you get good at reading the greens, the game gets much easier from there on. The only reason I gave it a 9.5 out of 10 is because of the sensitivity of the Analog stick to directions, it almost overdoes it at times, but that's just a trivial complaint.

Graphics: 9/10

They did a real nice job with this game, the characters look entirely believable, and there's some nice animations for each of them. The courses themselves look good too, while not a system pusher by any means, Outlaw Golf 2 looks more than competant enough to hold it's own. If you're a multi-system owner though, get the X-Box version, it looks far better and seems to run a bit smoother than the Playstation 2 incarnation. Still, on both systems the game looks wonderful, I couldn't ask for more. And as I said, the Beat Up the Caddie animations are hilarious; and there's quite a bit of comic relief in the characters themselves.

Audio: 10/10

Absolutely fantastic! I love the voice-overs for this game, Summer and Autumn are just a complete riot. There are stupid comments and sexual innuendoes galore in this game, makes me think they should change the "Mature" rating to "Immature" because of the South Park-esque humour involved in the game. David Atell of the Comedy Central show "Insomniac" provides the commentary for this game, and while he's not perfect, some of the cheesy one-liners he delivers actually add to the game, like "Summer is about to line up and whack that ball! Can you feel the excitement in my pants? **ahem** I mean the air, can you feel the excitement in the air?" Some say that he sucks, I say he did a good job, but can still improve. The soundtrack in this game is awesome too, extending from rap, funk and rock. And if you don't like the soundtrack, or want to add to it, the custom soundtrack feature is here too, and it is implemented wonderfully if you ask me. Being able to not worry about your favorite song cutting off as the next hole loads (which only takes a few seconds) is a good thing, and integrating it with the in-game soundtrack is a plus too. Unfortunately, the PS2 version doesn't have this feature but the soundtrack is so good you might not notice it.

Comedic Value: 10/10

Come on folks, how can you not laugh at this game? There's so much stuff to like about it if you ask me. David Atell's commentary suits the game perfectly even if it's repetitive. The voice-overs are funny too, especially for Summer and Autumn, sorry, had to toss that in there. And the flaming ball jokes that can follow from a perfect hit are just too easy to make. I think people need to look at this game from a perspective of a total goofball, and realise that we all need to laugh at something, right? Otherwise we'd go insane!

Overall: 10/10

While not a perfect game, it's awesome for the 20 bucks that I spent on it. It's definitely one of the better games available on the X-Box library, and I sincerely think X-Box owners will be in for a treat if they decide to pick this game up. With 8 courses, funny characters, a great soundtrack, X-Box Live gameplay, three unique aspects and some great but repetitive commentary. This game is a winner in my books, I am glad to have picked this one up, and I am sure once you get used to it, you will too.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 12/13/04