Dangerous Golf Review

Dangerous Golf arrives from the developers of critically acclaimed studio Criterion. Having left the Burnout roost and formed their own studio called Three Fields Entertainment Dangerous Gold forms the studios first attempt in their new venture. So does Dangerous gold deliver a hole in one or is it set to crash and burn. Oh the puns can’t be helped, here is our Dangerous Gold Review.

From the outset the concept of Dangerous gold is curious at best, it’s a gold game but its also a physics simulator. Your aim is simple cause as much chaos as possible and make sure the ball ends up in the cup on your last shot. So it sounds like golf with a mad twist. Well unfortunately having a flag cup and some golf terminology thrown in is as close as this game gets to being gold related. There’s a limit on the number of shots you can take so the concept of a handicap is lost here. You get in essence three shots one standard effort where you need to gain enough points to be rewarded with a “smashbreaker”. The “Smashbreaker” is a super powered shot and essentially adds flames and sparks to your next shot allowing you to manoeuvre the golf ball around the environment and cause as much carnage as possible.

So if you’ve managed to get a “Smashbreaker” shot you are guaranteed a third effort but it’s always a putt and your aim should be to put the ball in the cup. So as basic as the game sounds it’s so far from being golf it’s shameful to put the word of the sport in the title. The golfness adds nothing to the game, the environments are not golf courses or anything remotely related to them, the areas are petrol stations, kitchens, wine cellars and storage cupboards. Its random and throughout playing the game couldn’t help but keep asking myself “why?”. The games identify is lost, it could have been so much more with more golf related graphics and terminology even the scoring system doesn’t reflect the sport and to be fair it can’t due to the restrictions on how many shots you get.

The scoring works on a medal system and a series of multiplayers will help you achieve bronze, silver, gold or even a platinum medal. The higher your destruction the higher your score essentially. There are some extra bits added in to add some objectives to your shots. Across each of the environments are a series of objects either mirrors, wine bottles, plates, shelves etc. Smashing into selected objects or knocking down a series of them will unlock “Signature moves” or “Secret Sauce” unlocks. It’s all aimed at focusing the player on being more creative in their approach rather than just shooting for the high score. I like that feature but again it feels without this the game is dull as hell.

Once things that certainly will peak your interest with the game all be it for a limited time is the graphical effects a “Smashbreaker” has. This is without question the games signature move itself. The slow motion camera and physic effects are fantastic to watch and are well just pretty dam cool. It’s clearly a leaf from the developers past as these are similar effects from the burnout series of games just thrown around a golf ball. Coupled with the slow motion and destruction gives you the great sounds of clashing into various objects and nearly everything you touch is destructible, never has a golf ball hit so hard.

Having worked through over 20 missions however this concept was wearing thin, I was struggling to motivate myself to keep going the physic effects and slow mo destruction were cool but despite two mechanics that really work the game does little to keep me engaged for the long haul. Those two mechanics that are great were the shot abilities which unlock as you progress through the levels. They add a bit of variety but again the game does a poor job at explaining how you unlocked these abilities and actually how to use them a combination of button pressing will see most players discover how to use these features, almost laughable considering how often the controller layout appears on screen at each of those tedious loading screens.

A loading screen is something you will come pretty familiar with whilst playing Dangerous Golf, Loading times are extremely long and although that isn’t really a bad thing it is for this game. When an attempt at a level takes only 1 min you can easily be waiting that time to restart or replay it. Games such as this should have almost instant restarts and keep me engaged but Dangerous Golf does nothing to seduce me here. Having said that we believe the developers are working on this and we look forward to any pending updates.

The one great thing about this game is its pick up and play nature and it fits well for parties and coach co-op offering a range of local multiplayer options. Couple this with the Meta game where you constantly compete against your friends list for the highest scores on each level there’s a level of replay value here but again it’s just more of the same experience found in the campaign.

Dangerous Golf was reviewed on Xbox One with a copy provided by Xbox.