Outlaw Golf 2

"A Game So Difficult It Should Be Outlawed"

Correct me if I'm wrong, folks: the Outlaw series of games is supposed to be arcade-style gameplay, right? No simulations here, just over the top, wacky, completely unrealistic gameplay. I'm correct? Good. Then someone please tell me what in the hell happened with Outlaw Golf 2. There is nothing arcade about this game, save for the crazy cast of characters and the naughty humor. The rest of it is complete simulation. Simulation as in, this-game-isn't-supposed-to-be-a-simulation. Simulation as in "golf simulation", which in turn translates to "something I don't want to play."

The game of golf itself is a difficult one. It's not a game any Joe can just go out and play--you have to work hard at it for a long time before you can call yourself a "golfer." The same applies to Outlaw Golf 2. Because Hypnotix decided to go more in the direction of simulation than arcade, this is a game you have to practice at and lose repeatedly before you even have a chance at really competing with the game's AI. It's torturous hell. It's finding out that par doesn't cut it. It's learning the hard way that you can do pretty well through an entire nine holes and lose the whole damn ball of wax because of one bad swing. Imagine playing an opponent in a real life game of golf who always puts the ball perfectly on the green and never misses a putt, no matter how long it is. That's what this game is like. I'll admit, that is a slight exaggeration. Once in a blue moon, the AI screws up a shot onto the green. Once in a green half-moon, the AI misses a putt. But it's very rare.

I'll stop grumbling here and cut through the introductory mumbo-jumbo that reviews usually begin with, and get right to the heart of what you need to know about this game before you buy it: it's freakin' harder than hell. No, that's not just my opinion. Go to the Outlaw Golf 2 section of the Hypnotix message boards, and spend twenty minutes or so reading through the posts. Everyone that has picked up this game has had trouble with it. The AI in this game is unbelievably sharp. It laughs at your lame attempts to beat it. After the first two or three courses, in which the AI goes easy on you as you learn the ropes, you will learn how nigh impossible it is to win in Outlaw Golf 2.

One thing that exacerbates the high difficulty level is the game gives the player no instruction on the game of golf, or the play mechanics specific to this game. It might tell you that a particular club is "great for the fade", but it doesn't tell you what this means. It lets you raise you player's experience level in areas like control and accuracy, but doesn't explain what the difference between these two is and how each affects the gameplay (aren't attributes like control and accuracy mutually inclusive?). It talks about the size of the "sweetspot" on different clubs, but doesn't give the player the faintest idea of what a sweetspot is. The player is given the choice of what type of shot he is going to make, such as a pick, a chip, or a pitch, but the game never says word one to the player about how these different shot types work. No, none of this stuff is in the manual, and it's not in the tutorials either. All the player is shown is how to use the controls. Playing this game is like having a group of scientists drop you off all by yourself in the middle of some god-forsaken desert with nothing but a knife, and they tell you, "try to survive, dude. We'll be back in a month to evaluate how you did."

The gameplay structure of OG 2 is different than that of Outlaw Volleyball and the first OG. You can't pick just one character and work your way through the entire tournament mode. The game requires the player to play as every character, because tournament victories for each character will unlock different challenges in the Outlaw Range for all characters. Winning the range challenges gives you skill points you can use to upgrade your character's abilities. You may find yourself unable to win a particular course with Summer until you've unlocked more range challenges with other characters and beaten them . The annoying thing is, even when you play the game this way, the way it's "supposed to be played", it doesn't make the difficulty any less harsh. You literally have to be at the top of your game all the time if you expect to win.

Being at the top of your game all the time is no easy matter given how many variables you must manage on any given shot. The lay of the fairway and the green, obstacles like trees and bridges, wind speed and direction, the type of club, the type of shot, how much backspin if any, how much power you want to apply to the shot, how accurate you are with the left stick, ad infinitum. The game offers a multitude of opportunities to screw up. It does, however, bestow a tiny bit of mercy on the player by allowing the use of something called a Ghost Ball. Allowing only one Ghost Ball per hole, this is a virtual reality simulation shot that shows you exactly where your ball will end up after you're done aiming. It is a big help, but the ball will only go where the the Ghost Ball says it will if you hit it perfectly. That is, with the exact power percentage you've set your aim for, and with no slicing and dicing. And if the wind doesn't doesn't drop or gain a couple miles an hour, and if it doesn't shift direction. If you stand on your head with one shoe off, blow on the controller three times and hum Taps before you make your shot, it just might land within fifteen feet of where you want it to go. This game should have been called Outlaw Golf 2: Chaos Theory. If you understood that joke, congratulations on being smarter than 99% of the gamers out there (and no, it has nothing to do with the Splinter Cell game of the same name).

But, I have to admit, the game isn't all hellish torture. The female character models are un-freaking-believably beautiful. I've only been able to play with Harley and Summer, but oh-my-god are they the women of my dreams. They are so perfectly modeled that you have a hard time believing they are not real women. Their animations are incredibly life-like, so much so that it's obvious motion capture was used. Let's hear it for mo cap! And the breast physics . . . oh my dear lord the breast physics. This game has the best breast movement I've ever seen in any game. It is exaggerated just enough to tantalize you, but it's not overdone. Any male gamer owes it to himself to try out the big boobie code on Summer. I doubt you will ever see anything more amazing in your lifetime. Well, other than one of Summer's unlockable outfits. Harley is quite stunning as well, although not quite so blatantly erotic as Summer. Watching these two and their antics in the before-and-after shot clips is alone worth the price of the game.

Unfortunately the courses don't look anywhere near as good as the ladies do. I was a little disappointed with the resolution of the graphics on the courses. The spectators look positively ridiculous, little better than stick figures. I don't know if it's because we're dealing with enormous environments here, or some other technical issue, but the courses and the objects in them do have an underwhelming effect visually. At least it is very clear where the short grass ends and the tall grass begins.

Something that came as a complete shock to me is that the soundtrack sucks rotten donkey butt. After enjoying Outlaw Volleyball's rockin' tracks, I fully expected OG 2 to offer something of similar caliber in the audio department. I was sorely disappointed. I've never heard a single song in the OG 2 soundtrack before, and I bet most other people haven't either. It's like they got them all from the Library of Songs Nobody's Ever Heard Of. It doesn't have the upbeat, hip feel of Outlaw Volleyball's tracks. You would have to be drunk and high at the same time to get any enjoyment out of these lame, boring, depressing, post-grunge-but-we're-trying-to-keep-it-alive-anyway tunes. And James Brown? James Brown in a golf game!? Good grief. Spare yourself the torture of listening to the songs that came with the game and use your own custom soundtrack from your Xbox hard drive.

About the control: it's simple and yet it's not simple at all. It all comes down to how well you can move that left stick in a perfectly straight line, from 6 to 12, and how fast you can do it. Sounds like a piece of cake, and it is at first. But then the game starts psyching you out and making you think it should be really hard, because slicing is one of the most common mistakes in golf, and so it becomes hard. I watched in utter horror as something that I didn't even have to think about at first became an issue of extreme concern with every shot. Oh my god . . . (profuse sweating and tremors) . . . can I move this stick in a straight line? Clear up to the TOP??!! Aaahhgh, the pressure! Maybe if I tilt the controller just a bit this way . . . NOooooo! Seriously, the game makes you analyze something you've never had to think about before: exactly where you put your thumb on the left stick and exactly how you move it. You'll cry like a baby when you find out you have to learn to ride a bike all over again. Years of gaming experience, undone in a few hours of play. Damn this game. Damn this game to hell.

The game's camera system is for the most part problem free, but it does have some quirks. Occasionally it gets stuck and refuses to give you the angle you want for viewing the angle of your shot and the lay of the green. This is probably due to obstructions around the green like trees. And sometimes the game forgets the specific type of shot camera you have chosen (the camera that shows your ball flying through the air). As long as the camera lets me zoom in close on the ladies during putting, I don't care. It's not like supremo camera angles are going to help you win this game anyway.

OG 2 does have some arcade elements in its gameplay. Beating the crap out of your caddy improves your Composure Meter, which has a big influence on how well you play (as if this game wasn't difficult enough, you have to worry about your Composure Meter). Hitting a spectator with your ball maxes out your Composure Meter to the plus side, but if you waste a shot on hitting a spectator, you can pretty much forget about winning the hole. Winning Golf Cart challenges gives you a Perfect Shot. I'd like to tell you how a Perfect Shot works, but the Golf Cart challenges are so damn difficult to win I've never used one. These elements don't feel as lighhearted and fun as they should, because there is so much pressure to perform well in the actual golf gameplay. There is, however, a sadistic satisfaction in beating up your caddy. If you're able to get Summer to give her caddy Autumn the maximum beating, you are rewarded with a very arousing display of lesbian shenanigans.

Speaking of the Composure Meter, let's talk about that for a bit. Your composure meter has two sides: a good one and a bad one, with an even ranking being right in the middle. The better you play, the more your composure meter climbs into the green, which makes you an even better golfer. The worse you play, the more your meter drops into the red, which has a negative impact on subsequent shots. My question is, who thought up this ridiculous system? As if your ball landing in a sand trap wasn't punishment enough for your poor judgment, the game further punishes you by handicapping you on subsequent shots. The farther into the red you are on your composure meter, the worse you play and the harder it will be to climb out of it into the green. Basically, the game punishes you for being punished. It would be like your mom spanking you and then saying, "That was a very bad boy for making me spank you! I'm going to spank you again!" The composure system is so out of whack that I actually won a nine-hole three-player game with bad composure throughout the entire thing. The game makes it way too hard to climb out of bad composure, even if you're in the lead! It uses a system of Beating Tokens similar to the one in Outlaw Volleyball to help you boost your composure, so you'll need to get very good at the beating game.

In conclusion, I just have to say I hope Hypnotix learned something from this. I hope the angry hate mail flooded their offices following OG 2's release. I hope they learned about making their games a little more accessible and not quite so demanding of perfection. Outlaw Golf 2 is not a bad game by any means, it's just extremely user unfriendly. It probably sits just right with a small demographic of gamers who are golf nuts and enjoy the serious challenge it offers. But for the average Joe gamer who just wants to try out a fun golf game, this one is like drinking pickle juice straight from the jar. The women and their delicious breast physics make the ride worthwhile, but if want more from your fifty bucks, you'd best look elsewhere.

Final Rundown

Graphics: 8 Female models look incredible with amazing breast physics, but the courses are lacking in visual quality.

Audio: 7 The characters are well voice acted and the game has appropriate sound effects for golf, but the commentating by Dave Attel just doesn't quite work. He's not nearly as funny or charismatic as the commentator in Outlaw Volleyball.

Soundtrack: 0 Sucks to high heaven. Use your own custom soundtrack.

Gameplay: 6 This game is great fun, if you like losing.

Control: 8 Simple, which is good, but getting your swing down takes some work and some serious soul searching. The camera also suffers from some occasional quirks.

Replayability: I have no idea, because I will never finish this game.

Presentation: 5 The opening cgi movie introduces the characters against a black background. The effect is quite ugly and sets a bad tone right off the bat. The manual is nice, but the game offers no instruction at all in the rules, methods and terminology of playing golf. The box cover art is also really stupid. It's a golf ball sitting in the grass. Wow.

Final Score: 6 This is not an average of the above scores.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 06/24/05