A golf game that is equal parts silly fun and frustrating unpredictability. Golf With Your Friends is at its best and the easiest to enjoy if you are playing with friends (as the title suggests) and not taking the game too seriously. The moment you actually feel the need to do well, you will be firmly reminded that this game doesn’t care about your score.
The courses prioritize wackiness over being functional minigolf courses which is fine because it’s a video game, but it still expects you to get to the hole in 3 shots by ricocheting the ball off of 7 different moving obstacles you have to time perfectly. There’s only one single course in the game that is normal and simple; every other course is full of batshit crazy stuff. While playing with friends, the game quickly went from “let’s see how well we can all do!” to “OK which one of us can do the least terribly”. Which I guess is a fun experience with buddies when everyone is doing awful, but that doesn’t make for a very fun video game.
While this game is called “Golf With Your Friends”, you’ll all be golfing at the exact same time. The benefit of simultaneous golfing is it makes for much quicker matches, but it’s far less interactive than actually watching your friends golf. I was so focused on getting to the end before the time limit, that I never had any idea how my friends were doing aside from their occasional swearing or grunts of frustration. The only form of progression in the game is unlocking random cosmetics at unpredictable intervals every few games, which can also be frustrating when the game seemingly wants you to invest dozens of hours into it just to maybe get a fun hat you want after your 30th course. I played about 20 courses over the course of 10 hours and only unlocked 5 out of the maybe 80 different cosmetic items. Wild.
Golf With Your Friends is fun for a bit but between the frustrating course difficulty, unpredictable holes, lack of player engagement, and poor progression hooks, there’s not much of a draw to keep playing this game after one or two friendly golf sessions.
+ A fun time with friends
+ The wackiness can be fun if you accept doing poorly
+ Some cool mechanic ideas
- Opaque cosmetic unlock system
- Occasional bugs like clipping through a level
- Only one easy, straight-forward course
- Massive difficulty swing from the relative easy holes to bonkers, overly-complex holes
- Making good shots requires more trial-and-error and luck than actual skill
- Simultaneous golfing makes for quicker matches, but is far less interactive than watching your friends golf.
The courses prioritize wackiness over being functional minigolf courses which is fine because it’s a video game, but it still expects you to get to the hole in 3 shots by ricocheting the ball off of 7 different moving obstacles you have to time perfectly. There’s only one single course in the game that is normal and simple; every other course is full of batshit crazy stuff. While playing with friends, the game quickly went from “let’s see how well we can all do!” to “OK which one of us can do the least terribly”. Which I guess is a fun experience with buddies when everyone is doing awful, but that doesn’t make for a very fun video game.
While this game is called “Golf With Your Friends”, you’ll all be golfing at the exact same time. The benefit of simultaneous golfing is it makes for much quicker matches, but it’s far less interactive than actually watching your friends golf. I was so focused on getting to the end before the time limit, that I never had any idea how my friends were doing aside from their occasional swearing or grunts of frustration. The only form of progression in the game is unlocking random cosmetics at unpredictable intervals every few games, which can also be frustrating when the game seemingly wants you to invest dozens of hours into it just to maybe get a fun hat you want after your 30th course. I played about 20 courses over the course of 10 hours and only unlocked 5 out of the maybe 80 different cosmetic items. Wild.
Golf With Your Friends is fun for a bit but between the frustrating course difficulty, unpredictable holes, lack of player engagement, and poor progression hooks, there’s not much of a draw to keep playing this game after one or two friendly golf sessions.
+ A fun time with friends
+ The wackiness can be fun if you accept doing poorly
+ Some cool mechanic ideas
- Opaque cosmetic unlock system
- Occasional bugs like clipping through a level
- Only one easy, straight-forward course
- Massive difficulty swing from the relative easy holes to bonkers, overly-complex holes
- Making good shots requires more trial-and-error and luck than actual skill
- Simultaneous golfing makes for quicker matches, but is far less interactive than watching your friends golf.