Site: http://planetminigolf.com/
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0xwZ6ZzQUk
Taking a break from all that creature summoning and spell casting, to focus on a favourite pastime.
Planet minigolf, another one of those games that we see a million times over on flash game sites. …
Or is it? Sure it may have ‘minigolf’ in the title… but will it stack up to those classics such as … “minigolf” … and “minigolf 2”?
- Released exclusively for PSN on 1st June 2010 for the US, and a day later, only due to the day of store updates for the EU for £6.29
- Developed by Zen Studios, who are rather recent, releasing 7 out of their 9 games as downloadable games on PSN and Live, along with two games for the Nintendo DS, one being the port of Ghostbusters. However they are most well-known for their pinball games including Marvel and Zen pinball, along with The Punisher: No Mercy also exclusively for PSN, bit this was recently taken down due to the loss of their contract with Marvel.
- The game is purely a crazy golf game, gone a little more crazy. 144 holes over 4 locations including Soho (City/London) Buccaneers Hideout (Pirate/Caribbean) Polar Station (Artic/North Pole) & Ancient Valley (Jungle/South America), as well as 5 playable characters from a small girl, to some sexy lady and some blokes. A world national leaderboard, tournaments and a course creator (and thus was released under the Play, Create, Share banner)
- DLC was released on 21st of September 2010 entitled Stronghold Island which added new a new location 36 more holes, more trophies and more bits and bobs for creation, a day before however on the 20th they released a patch to fully utilise Playstation Move.
- The game has scored 67 from critics on average, as well as a slightly higher 75 from gamers.
- As to date, it’s the only game on a mainstream console to feature more female playable characters than male. … possibly.
Right, now I got this with Plus… a while back… and boy am I glad I didn’t part with money for it. It’s… not that it’s bad… it’s that it’s not what I wanted it to be.
I love crazy over the top things as much as the next guy, but I was hoping for a general minigolf game… but this was just too wacky and difficult from the outset to be enjoyable for me in a casual sense. The power ups that make your ball fly, make it large enough to go across some rope, make it drunk, give it a rocket boost, and motion control, along with having stupidly placed holes from the start and some insanely precise logs/barrels and what not to squeeze through just made it infuriating. In the words of the great Sean Lock “this isn’t crazy, this is f…. rather irritating”
Now, apart from it… not being… ‘that’ fun to play, which should be the number one thing for a casual minigolf game, there are a few positives. There is that hole maker… 
or whatever it’s called. But even that seems… borked. There’s quite a small space to build things in, and it seems stupidly hard to make what you’d want, it’s actually slightly easier to make your course in LittleBigPlanet. However, this gave me some enjoyment now that I was finally able to make my own minigolf style, normal minigolf, minigolf course.
The character choices… are average, despite there only being 5… and it being a game for up to 6 players. But still… at least… you can change their hats? The changes in scenery… are nice, albeit you won’t really notice or care after watching the little intro for the 15th time after losing it all on one stupid hole because the physics of the game seem completely off half the time.
There are of course redeeming features, there are currently 51,223 holes you can download and play (albeit only 100 or so of them are worth the time) there is replay uploading to youtube, and you can easily scare small children with the strange lumps on Bruce’s arms.
This may seem short...... and that's because it is. The game offers you minigolf, there isn't much I can say that you haven't already seen/heard/played. I offer it open to you to fill in anything that I may have missed.
Graphics: 6.5 Sometimes it looks really nice, other times there are some pretty poor poly/vertices placement and stretched colours. However, the initial loading screen with the motion controlled snapshots is totally awesome.
Sound: 7.5 There’s a groovy little soundtrack (and custom XMB ones) and the ball sounds like a ball being hit…
Multiplayer: 8 Now obviously this is the shining point of the game. 6 player online and offline is a great choice, and you can all get infuriated together.
Fun Factor: 5 Other people may have other ideas on this… but… I honestly struggled to enjoy it. However, being the game it is, there will always be the chance to come back and just pick up and play… …if you’d ever want to is another question
The Other: 6 DLC, an awesome website, and a nice picture for XMB, but nothing.. ‘extra’
Final score: 6.5 (You can still enjoy the hole in one celebrations when you fluke it in, but most of the time, it’s as gameable as badger baiting)
So, tell me forum… what’s your opinion on Planet Minigolf? Did you purchase it immediately through your love of the… ‘sport’? Did you pick it up free? Or was you just hoping for some juicy pictures of Honey?
PS: It's only an hour late...
do quite enjoy it, the family and friends (that i have) play it now and then with the move controller. that's probably my biggest gripe with this game. sometimes as you're lining up a shot and you swing your controller the ball might only move a couple of inches even if you gave it "quite a whack" for queen and country.
some of the user-made holes can be really fun but for the most people have made impossible holes that, sadly, take away a lot of fun factor. nothing can be more boring waiting for LordRoss to try and take an impossible shot over an impossibly long gap with an impossibly dumb angle of approach.
in concluding, add alcohol and a late friday night and you're onto a winner!
I had high hopes for this game. I've loved computer golf games all the way back to Leaderboard on the Commodore 64 and I've always had a soft spot for crazy golf both in real life and virtual versions of varying quality. To be honest, I don't think I've ever come across a crazy golf video game that really captures the player in the way that 'normal' golf simulators from PGA European Tour to Everybody's Golf have grabbed me.
But here was Zen Studios, creators of the fabulous Zen Pinball, a quality entry into the world of Pinball simulators... And it included a course designer with online play and course sharing... Surely there was some promise there...
But no, no, no. It's all wrong. 
Well, most of it.
I'm completely with Pacman on this one. It should be possible, damnit, to make interesting enough courses to support gameplay, that don't need any of the gimmicks that clog this game up like congealed white stuff in the trap under the sink. I don't appreciate the ability for a player to temporarily guide the ball, or jump it, or rocket boost it or glue it or glide it or whatever... I don't particular like fauna randomly wandering around the course. I don't think there's a place for the kind of convoluted courses that result, whereby a skilled player who has learned the tricks can almost guarantee a hole-in-one every time but which leave an unskilled or unlearned player scrabbling in the dust shot after shot.
The finest crazy golf I've played in RL was the 'Extraordinary Golf' course at Alton Towers. I'm sure it's not the acme of its type, but it's the best I've played on. 18 imaginative holes, gorgeously decorated and well designed, that require nothing more than an attempt to judge the best line, an attempt to play the shot in that direction with the right power, where a considered approach can usually guarantee that the ball will finish in the general vicinity of the hole, or well on its way there, but holes-in-one require a fair balance of skill and luck.
Why can't we have that in a video game? No bombs or rockets or penguins or crabs, just a well-balanced challenge.
OK... it's not all bad news. You can make your own holes, and when you're playing against real people, everyone's in the same boat. Consequently, multiplayer can be really good fun. But oh my god it's so slow. Loading screens seem to take up an inrodinate amount of gameplay time and it really really drags, especially when you're playing a randomised course where each hole takes place in a different environment. When you want to build your own courses, you're presented with an irregular and poorly defined space in which to plonk down a selection of big square pieces, à la Trackmania. All too often you find you've run out of space and have to move all your big square pieces around to make space, then you find that you have to rotate the design or mirror it just to squeeze it into the level. There's something fundamentally wrong there. If you're going to build a course out of tiles, you should be allowed to do it outside the context of the environment. [Aside: Why can't someone repurpose the ModNation Racers track editor as a golf course editor? Course design should be organic and tactile.]
Finally, the whole online course sharing is confusing. How can you identify the kind of holes you enjoy playing? Even setting up a multiplayer game online is baffling at first.
Having said all this, you might think that I hate the game. I don't. I quite enjoy it when I play it. But it's such a waste of the potential that the game had, and because of the issues and especially the load times I rarely feel like booting it up.
Every developer, no matter how big or small will always strive to something differently, unique, or original to feel like they've accomplished something, when evidently missing the fundamental meaning of a video game. Something simple and enjoyable.
If they had given us, a plain square editing area, with the generic mini/crazygolf objects and levels, I would have been more than happy.
But, if there was an actual golfing game with the land editing of Modnation Racers, it'd clearly go down well. Especially if we can add in windmills to shoot through, EVERYWHERE!
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