Platform: PC

Genre: Golf resort simulation

Developer: Cat Daddy Games

Publisher: Activision Value Publishing

ESRB: E

MSRP: $20 (US)

Minimum requirements:

- Pentium 200MHz or faster

- Win 95/98/ME

- 32MB RAM

- 2MB DirectX 8.0 compatible video card

- DirectX 8.0 compatible sound card

- 8X CD-ROM

- Mouse, keyboard

- 450 MB available hard drive space w/ 300MB of swap space

Pros:

- Easy to drop into

- Low system requirements

- Control just about everything

- You’re more god than tycoon

- Pretty good graphics and sound

- Drop a volcano on your course!

- Varying challenges to overcome

- Viewing the action from the golfers perspective is a neat diversion

Cons:

- On lower resolutions, the menus totally block your view

- Pest Control building is under the wrong menu

- Threadbare manual

- Can chug along at times

Buy this game at  Amazon.com

Any game such as GRT needs a solid interface or all the fun will be sucked out of the experience. With a few more tweaks and one or two improvements, GRT’s interface could have been rock solid. As it stands, GRT comes off consistent with clay, which is not to say that it’s bad – it just could have been better. Part of this can be blamed on the threadbare manual that doesn’t explain much. Okay, it barely gives the basics. Most gamers never read manuals and jumping right into the game doesn’t take much effort. A few minutes of poking around are adequate to figure out how things operate and what options are available. In fact, laying down a couple of fairways takes all of a couple of minutes – this includes the time to install sand traps and water hazards and maybe modifying the terrain beforehand. (You can create par 3, 4, or 5 holes.) For those that absolutely need it, there is a tutorial – it’s under the Challenges option. It’s very basic but it has the advantage of giving you a ton of money to play around with. At lower resolutions, the course becomes totally obscured by the drop-down menus. This is not in itself a problem but when you’re trying to build pathways and or place a maintenance shed you’ll have big problems. I recommend playing GRT at 800x600 or greater to allow you to see what you’re doing. (The menus themselves are straightforward and a little description pops up over each icon.) You can zoom in and out and rotate your view as in The Sims, but placing objects in GRT isn’t as easy. Rotating a structure before you place it is awkward – you can’t just move the mouse and turn it around, you have to go down to the bottom left corner then click the rotate button. And placing objects is inconsistent. To lay down new turf you don’t have to clear any flora, but if you want to put in a cobblestone path from hole 4 to hole 5 you’ve got to clear out the trees first. My last complaint with the interface is that a very important building that should be under maintenance buildings but isn’t. That is the Pest Control building. My entire course was plagued with a gopher infestation and I couldn’t figure out what the hell I was supposed to do to get rid of the little buggers. I found the Pest Control building by accident under the Medical Facilities option. (Tip to all developers: Players should never have to find something so important by accident.) Fortunately, my frustration was slightly allayed when I saw the pest control man paying tribute to the movie Caddyshack by using high-explosives to eradicate gopher infestations.

Some of these types of sims can get bogged down in micromanagement. GRT avoids this for the most part. Basically you control how much each facility on your course charges for services. If prices are too high, people won’t spend their dollars and in turn you can’t expand. The lifeblood of your course are the golfers themselves. If they’re happy, they’ll come back; if you forgo putting in adequate facilities (bathrooms, concession stands, etc.), they’re mood will turn sour and they’ll leave; keeping them around after they’ve played their round by providing other entertainment like tennis courts and driving ranges mean more money for you. Gauging the general mood of the golfers is easy to view a number of ways. You can follow individual golfers from the ¾ view or at their level in 3D. (Before entering the 3D view you have detail options to choose. It’s obvious that the engine used for GRT was never meant to facilitate 3D.) While centered on a particular golfer, their thoughts or where they’re going scrolls by. Plus you can view how happy they are, how much money they have to spend, and their golf score. It’s not as in-depth as The Sims but that’s a good thing. But one advantage of GRT is that you can pick up and place golfers or groundkeepers anywhere on the map.

golfers standout from the backgrounds. Each environment is distinct (and actually affect the difficulty of building a good course). And there are a wide variety of landscape objects, trees, and buildings to place to make things look interesting. The voices for the golfers aren’t outstanding – they sound like members of the development team. Music is melodic if not slightly repetitive. But it’s a budget title so I wasn’t expecting a cast of thousands and orchestrated soundtracks.

With a little more time (and possibly money) Golf Resort Tycoon could have been an 8 point something but instead it hits the high sevens. For the price it certainly delivers what it promises on the box: "Dream it. Design it. Build it." You can’t take over other golf courses, or expand to other areas and manage more than one course at a time, and it may not gripe your consciousness like The Sims, but it does have some good clean, non-violent fun.

Reviewed by Omni