Mario Golf: Advance Tour

"Golfing in an advanced way"

Mario Golf Advance Tour is great experience for anyone who has ever played golf games and enjoys them. And is also a great new experience for those not a great fan of golf games. This game is not only a golf game but is also a role playing game that involves a decent story and a good leveling up system.

The game starts off as you create a character, there isn't any customization here but building up your character is good enough. After this your teacher bringing you to your first golf course and pairs you up with someone. Of course this is the same person every time and later you can change her name. From there you can do singles and doubles tournaments as you beat more tournaments.

The game is very fun even after you beat it and there are plenty of side challenges and things to be unlocked including characters, courses, and new challenges in the field. The graphics are superb and the controls are excellent. This is a game that can keep you hooked from beginning to end and I believe is even better then its Gamecube counterpart.

Graphics: As soon as you start up this game you will immediately realize the works done for the graphics. The characters are clean and the courses are beautiful. Although the character models seem just like the ones off of Golden sun I assure you that these graphics are still very well done.
10/10

Sound: I thought sound was very well done. From the starting cut scene to the course music that is played. It all seems to have good value and never was annoying and didn't ever seem to get repetitive. Of course the other in game sounds were good to, the swing of your club, the sound of hitting a rock on course and everything was well placed and sounded great.
10/10

Control: Everything you can do in this game is very easy to do. It is very easy to maneuver your shot and judge wind and land forms accordingly. Also spin is as easy as ever to do and if you are feeling lazy then there is an auto swing which isn't half bad it's self. There is a learning curve to be the best but all of this can be learned easily by the end of the game.
10/10

Overall: This game overall is the best golf game I have ever played. Easy to pick up yet hard to put down. Although the story was a little cheesy it didn't matter because the golf I was playing was excellent. The doubles addition was a good twist on the action but singles was still better because you have control over every hit.
10/10

Let downs: This game didn't have many let downs. But I will point a couple out. The AI wasn't very good with the control, your partner and your opponents will miss there mark a lot and you will have to spend a decent amount of your levels putting points onto control and impact zone. Also seeing the opponents and your partner shoot so much was kind of pointless, a speed up shot by holding the A button would have helped like the one in manual replays. But all of this didn't matter much because the game was still very fun.

Replay value: Moderately high, Leveling up your character and doing all of the challenges will take a while, plus with the ability to export your character to the Gamecube version you can play your opponents on the Gamecube or Gameboy advance version of this game.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 06/24/04