“Give a man a fish and you will feed him for a day. Teach him golf and you'll be bored for life. " To say it is not us, gamers very often biased towards this sport, but it is one of the many notes on golf that can be consulted within What the golf?, Triband title originally released on September 19, 2019 for PC and iOS and now also available on Nintendo Switch, which offers a different version of the sporting practice that made Tiger Woods famous: forget elegant clothes, caddies, wood 3 to place the long shot or the putter to accurately hit the ball on the green.
That of What the golf? It is therefore not the classic version of the discipline known all over the globe, but it retains some of the main mechanics, changing them and adding a factor of unpredictability that upsets everything, making the proposal of this title on the Nintendo hybrid one of a kind.
The approach of the world of video games to golf, since the first work that expressed a videogame transposition (Computer golf! On Magnavox Odyssey, 1978), had very little room for maneuver: it is never easy to present a sport so reasoned and with such dilated rhythms - as golf is precisely - making it attractive for those who, by their nature or gamer habits, are used to different developments; for this reason it is even more unique the unique approach adopted from What the golf? and beyond what may be our knowledge about it, perhaps acquired in first person on the green lawn or through titles of the same kind, golf here is completely revised, as the brief initial tutorial explains well, which immediately introduces the watchwords of the work: simplicity and madness.
The mode single player campaign it is characterized by many short levels, usually oriented on one different thematic o type of interaction with the surrounding environment. This is how you find yourself reaching the flag by moving a cow, driving a car or perhaps piloting a barrel full of explosives ready to explode. Many levels offer something insanely different from the previous ones which - in most cases - revolves around the basic mechanics of a golf game (simplified for the occasion): load and direct movement via an indicator on the screen. However, such a simple and not very articulated indicator takes on a special role in What the golf? and becomes capable of conveying truly original types of interaction.
The main strength of What the golf? it is precisely his revolving around a single mechanic, exploring it and declining it in every possible way but remaining at the base simple in several aspects: a single way of playing makes everything incredibly immediate, although it takes a few moments to understand what is happening when to move - following our input - is not a classic golf ball.
In fact, each of the many protagonist objects on the screen obviously has different physical properties, therefore requiring variations in execution: from the heavy movement of a house, made up of clear and short movements, to the uncontrollable slide given by the launch of a chair with wheels: an absurd succession of possibilities, in which we find ourselves controlling everything using the left stick combined with the Joy-Con buttons, or using it touch screen of the Nintendo console a bit like we were dealing with a smartphone game.
To make What the golf? it is not only his continuous gimmicks and variations on the theme, but also his citation of elements of pop culture, including successful video games such as Superhot, Metal Gear Solid, Portal and others. All this results in borrowing the most characteristic mechanics of the titles of these brands, sometimes rendered in a more rough way to try to come to terms with the world of What the golf?, Other times more successful in the implementation (specifically, Superhot-inspired levels are truly amazing), but still resulting in great overall variety, which however goes to show its side on some (few) occasions when heterogeneity gives way to repetitiveness. If all this were not enough, it is possible to take advantage of a mode in local multiplayer very fun and immediate, consisting of quick challenges in sequence, unfortunately limited to two players only.
From the possibilities offered, a whole universe of levels opens up, proposed at a basic difficulty and then playable again but a greater difficulty, often represented by a few more obstacles along the way, some more complex objective or more simply a limited number of moves with which to reach the specific objective of the level, which is not always limited to the classic flag, but rather the carrying out of specific actions. All of this adds greater depth - for anyone wanting to complete the game 100% - to usually very simple challenges at entry level.
It therefore becomes interesting to discover what What the golf? Has in store for us, with a continuous parade of interesting, crazy and new ideas that contribute to giving the feeling of having a new one in your hands. WarioWare, also thanks to an inspired artistic sector, simple but sufficient to make each section memorable from a visual and sound point of view: the always present halo of lucid madness often translates into some truly incredible gimmick.
In addition to the campaign and the section for two players, they are present additional modes that allow you to replay some levels (even with further increased difficulty), obtaining points that will then position us on one online ranking based on our performance in trying to reach the goal with the least number of strokes (or moves).
What the golf? it is a truly out-of-the-box experiment, which manages to entertain in unexpected ways: we have lost count of the times in which, during our experience, we have been amazed by original and funny quotes. Within this title there is really everything and, if golf might seem like a sport not suitable for everyone, this transposition in WarioWare style expands its language and makes it universal.
