Dangerous Golf

With its brilliant graphics and mightily impressive physics, had Three Fields concentrated a little more on the zany and fun side of Dangerous Golf and toned down the often ridiculously over-demanding challenges of the later levels, recommending this game would be a no-brainer. As it stands however, there’s still a genuinely high amount of enjoyment to be had, but frustration will likely soon mount for most players once they reach the hazard levels and putting challenges. If you miss Burnout‘s Crash Junction mode though, and are looking for something that doesn’t take itself too seriously, Thr...

Destruction in video games is often portrayed in one way: As violence towards other beings borne out of anger, fear, desperation, hatred, or general malevolence. Dangerous Golf takes destruction out of those contexts and makes it creative, liberating, and stimulating. The gameplay has accessible depth, balancing fundamental emotional needs of immediate gratification with deeper states of curiosity and engagement. Now, if you close your textbooks we can get down to the business of how to topple 18 antique suits of armor and two perched lion statues with a single flaming golf ball.

Three Fields Entertainment, the indie studio behind Dangerous Golf, comprises mainly of the same minds responsible for Criterion classics Burnout and Black – and this is abundantly clear from the start. Its debut title is an arcade sports game that shares as much in common with golf as Rocket League does with football. Maybe less so, in fact. Forget par, forget scoring low to win, forget even golf clubs – the aim here is to simply cause as much destruction as possible, and then putt the ball into the hole in the flashiest way that you can think of.

Dangerous Golf dazzles with its impressive environmental destructibility and the general absurdity of its scenarios entertains for much of its 100 courses. However, blocked perspectives and fudged physics too often swap the fun for frustration, and ultimately you can only destroy the same expensive-looking props so many times before your appetite for destruction is well and truly sated.

Balls to the wall.

Somehow even duller than regular golf.

Dangerous Golf fancies itself silly and fun, as telegraphed by its lime-green menus, rollicking, record-scratch score, and “punk rock” appropriation of a haughty, classist sport. But the destruction doesn’t have much of a satisfying crunch, exacerbated by the floaty ball controls when you’re in peak destruction mode. The load times and egregious re-purposing of assets and areas kill any desire I have to get high scores on holes. And it doesn’t even lean into its anachronistic, extreme-sport silliness thanks to its sterile Unreal 4 tech demo aesthetic and character-less “world tour.” It’s fun f...