- With apologies to Tiger Woods PGA
Tour 2004, this is hands-down the best Xbox golf title
- Packed with tons of golf game and tournament options
- Plays great online
- An overall lack of professional
players, most notably (with obvious reason) Tiger Woods
- No speed golf mode!
- First Xbox Live content download will cost you (but only $5
bucks)
- Generally below-average announcing and commentary
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Links
2004
Score: 9.2 / 10
Long before the Xbox was even a doodled
idea at Microsoft, its Links golf franchise had become the top-selling
PC golf game around. Surprisingly, while Microsoft has covered the
entire gamut of the sporting gaming world with first-party Xbox titles,
Links had been noticeably absent from the Microsoft sports roster. But
it was definitely worth the wait. The same high-quality PC game has been
perfectly ported to the Xbox and with Xbox Live support topping its
impressive array of features, Links 2004 is the best Xbox golf game
available, including the current offering of Electronic Arts’ great
Tiger Woods PGA Tour series.
Now, I’ve said it before: I’m not a big golf fan. But As Tiger Woods PGA
Tour 2003 proved to me last year, a golf game done right can even appeal
to the non-golf fans, too. Unlike The Tiger Woods franchise, however,
Links 2004 plays a little closer to the simulation vest. You won’t be
getting any holes-in-ones on a regular basis in Links 2004. But that’s
not a negative in any respect.
Obviously, with EA locking up Tiger Woods for its own golf game, he
isn’t in Links 2004, and not many PGA players of note appear at all. The
“big” golf stars of Links
2004 are Sergio Garcia, Mike Weir, and the
LPGA’s top player, Annika Sorenstam. If you don’t follow golf at all,
you may not have heard of either Garcia or Weir before although it was
hard to miss hearing Sorenstam’s name at least once last year in her
highly-publicized PGA Tour appearance. If you choose, you can create
your own player, who you can pick the clothing and equipment with an
allotment of cash to
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disperse amongst the skill points that determine how good your player
performs on the course.
You can upgrade skills and equipment by winning money in the career mode
tour. The higher you place in each tournament, the more you make and the
higher you climb in the world rankings. As you upgrade and reach the
upper echelon of the top Links 2004 players, newer equipment becomes
available (including balls that affect spin and distance), giving you a
better chance of being the tour champion in the end.
Links 2004 throws feature after feature your way. There are five career
mode tours, each increasingly more difficult. You’ll play in tournaments
and also have skill events like putting or driving shots into a marked
area of the hole or trying to match or exceed famous performances
throughout PGA history.
If you just want to play a few rounds outside the career mode, Links
2004 provides an unbelievable variety of golf games to play, including
skins, best ball, Nassau, Stableford, and stroke play. The only missing
game is one last seen in EA’s golf game: speed golf.
Learning how to play Links 2004 isn’t difficult, although learning how
to play efficient and winning golf takes a bit of time. Due in large
part to its help system, Links 2004 is an instantly accessible golf
game. The aim marker helps you figure out the best shot path, the view
aim marker zooms in to the hole to give you another chance at directing
your shot, and there’s even a landscape grid to help you judge the ups
and downs of the terrain that you will be putting on. A free roam camera
allows you to view the course from any direction.
Shooting is made much easier with an array of shooting options. A wind
gauge gives you the direction the wind is blowing. The game
automatically selects the best club for any particular shot, but to make
the game more realistic, you can disable that assist. The power meter
indicates the best swing you can take and you can also control the
ball’s spin. Each of these attributes can be used in tandem to place the
perfect shot no matter the weather or course.
Links 2004 is missing some of the more famous golf courses, like Pebble
Beach, because of licensing deals already snatched up by Electronic
Arts. But there’s plenty enough here to nix the repetitiveness of
playing the same courses over and over and having enough different-style
courses to make you a well-rounded (video game) golfer. Some of the
diverse and beautiful courses that are found in Links 2004 are Mauna
Lani, Superstition Mountain, Oakmont, and the granddaddy of them all,
St. Andrews. Additionally, Microsoft is providing other courses through
Xbox Live downloads to extend Links 2004’s shelf-life.
But those downloads aren’t free, or at least the first course that it’s
offered up isn’t, costing $5 bucks. That isn’t much to pay for an
expansion pack of sorts, and if you’re a golf game fanatic it will be
chump change to pay for more courses to play. The casual Links 2004
player might pause at throwing another $5 Microsoft’s way after spending
$50.
Links 2004 copycats the excellent graphical facets of Tiger Woods PGA
Tour franchise. The courses are rendered with excruciating detail, as
are the beautiful weather effects. Players appear realistic and move
fluidly while swinging, but are just okay on the visual scale. But again
it’s the courses that are the real draw of Links 2004, and they are done
well. A couple of neat eye-pleasing touches are when smashing a great
tee shot and seeing the ball flying slow-mo through apparently
sonic-type airwaves on its way to the fairway and the rapid camera
shutter action (as if there’s a photographer taking a picture) that
happens when you hit a great bottom-of-the-hole-finding putt as it heads
towards its destination.
I wish I could say the same good things about the vocal commentary
throughout the game, but alas, it’s overwhelmingly weak. It comes up
with the same phrasings shot after shot until it gets plain annoying.
Sound effects are much better, especially the chirping of birds as you
traverse over the course greens.
Xbox Live gameplay is the one aspect that Links 2004 has over Tiger
Woods PGA Tour 2004 that clobbers EA’s prized golf title like a
nine-iron to the back of the head. Links 2004 is easily one of the best
XSN sports efforts, flawlessly bringing lag-free and heated competitive
online sports gaming to a whole new level. Through the XSN, you can
either join or host tournaments, and even playing with multiple
opponents, Links 2004 never drags, letting you take your shot at the
same time as your adversaries to speed up rounds. There’s a ranking
system to show you how you stack up against other Links 2004 players
too.
As hard as it is for me to believe, with my heavy disinterest in the
real game of golf, Links 2004 is actually my favorite video game sports
title at the moment. Microsoft has done a good job of providing an
easily accessible but by no means easy golf game. It has an overwhelming
amount of golf goodies including a stellar reproduction in video game
form of some of the world’s most famous courses. But Links 2004’s
green-jacket winning feature is the strong Live gameplay that makes this
the champion of golf games on the Xbox.
