Golf: Tee It Up! – Xbox Live Arcade review

Multi-format golfing fans will already know a thing or two about Hot Shots Golf – named Everybody’s Golf in the west – on PSP and PS3. Tee It Up is a competent clone, and a demonstration of how slim the good/bad game divide is. Played with the classic three-click golf controls, this is a classic cartoony golf game which slips up on the essential details – the swingometer feels too long and fast, the characters are beige, the ball physics feel as if the balls were wrapped in cellophane, and the slow-mo mid-air control gimmick is just that: a gimmick.

With only two courses and a conspicuous space on the menu screen suggesting more will drop as DLC, the 800 point cost is too much to ask. On paper, Hot Shots and Tee It Up are near identical, but it’s only taken a handful of tiny faults to turn Hot Shots’ hole in one into Tee It Up’s triple bogey. A totally competent golf game which ultimately does too much wrong and too little right.

Jul 11, 2008