Powerstar Golf

Powerstar Golf is a game that’s unpolished in places, but also superbly fun and dangerously addictive at times. Mastering the game will take a fair amount of time, and there’s no doubt in our minds that what you get is easily worth the asking price. Well worth a spin.

Par for the course.

Powerstar Golf manages to successfully marry an old-school arcade golf experience with some decidedly new-school ideas. The lack of proper online multiplayer is a bit of a blow, but the Rivals mode has the potential to provide an ongoing challenge after you’ve scooped up all of the career medals. It’s not a complete hole in (Xbox) One for golf fans, but it’s a good deal of fun if you desperately want to hit the links on your new machine.

I have been a fan of videogame golf for a while now. My addiction started on the Sega Genesis playing PGA Tour. I have never been able to conjure the patience, or skill, to hit the real links so the virtual representation has always been the way for me. When I learned that Microsoft was publishing an arcade-like golf experience for the Xbox One I was interested to see what that would be. Alas, Powerstar Golf is a downloadable title is hidden amongst the bigger and splashier launch titles. After playing more than a few rounds I have to say that although there are a few gameplay elements I had i...

Despite its exaggerated cartoon characters and picturesque sunsets, Powerstar Golf feels surprisingly staid and lacking personality. This is further exacerbated by the isolating feeling that, without sofa buddies, you're always playing alone. Single-player becomes tiring and the fact that you have to play a separate mode to contribute scores to the online Rivals' data - rather than it using your career data, say - makes the asynchronous multiplayer even less appealing. Powerstar Golf adds some nice touches to a genre presided over by Everybody's Golf, but its limited scope and some baffling om...

It’s two steps forward, two steps back — simultaneously a look at the promising future of the next generation of consoles and its likely frustrations. Powerstar Golf made me feel like I was competing with my friends without having to actually coordinate with them and get them into a match. It builds the type of seamless social experience that I’m hopeful we’ll see a lot more of on this generation of consoles. But it also builds in an economic model that favors microtransactions over guaranteed, consistent progression.

In the build up to the launch of the Xbox One, Powerstar Golf has been overlooked in favour of some of the sexier, more hardcore AAA titles up for grabs. Gamers didn’t seem bothered, the press wasn’t shown much of it, and attentions have generally been focused elsewhere. Maybe all of this has worked in the game’s favour, however, because Powerstar Golf arrives as a pleasant surprise.