Everybody’s Golf (PSVR) Review
Fancy yourself a Golfing Fan, Pro or even just a Beginner wanting to get into the real thing? Polish your handicap from the comfort of your own home before paying those Club Fees and apply your VR expertise to blow away your 4-ball squad from your first Drive!
Everybody’s Golf has always had a certain charm to it that has continued to make it a party or social gathering favorite. With launch of Everybody’s Golf for the PSVR, that little charm has just escalated to pure addiction, where your fellow players start begging to grab the clubs away from you to have a turn of their own!
Longest Drive Rivalry
Everybody’s Golf VR starts off with a very detailed tutorial on how to get the basics down to make sure that you enjoy your gaming experience, and this is done on the in-game driving range (practice range). However, before you can start swinging your clubs like Happy Gilmore, you need to set your height, orientation (left handed or right handed) and stance to calibrate the VR camera to your swing.
All of these settings can be changed during the game should a shorter or taller player take over. Needless to say, with any PSVR title, you need enough room to play without injuring yourself or your spectators, but the space required is at least 3 meters squared around you.
Once you head onto a course, you get to choose from a variety of options for your session, like how many holes you would like to play, your clubs (ranging from beginner to professional), your caddy, tees, green orientation and your tees. When you load in, you can swop into an aerial view of the hole to familiarize yourself with the ideal lay position after your first stroke to line up for that sweet pre-green lie. Your caddy will tell you whether there is a draft or heavy wind to contend with, which helps you decide whether you need to open or close your club face slightly upon addressing the ball.
Play It Safe Young Padawan!
If you are a golf pro or regular player of the real thing, you can select which club you would like to use during play, or alternatively, you can let the game automatically decide for you which club you should use for each shot. A recommended direction marker will appear ahead of you, but should you choose to approach the green in a different style, you can play your way.
To be honest, I tried the recommended approaches, but I preferred playing my way… the safe way, and my game improved drastically! The game allows you to pull the trigger on the PlayStation Move Controller to see in which direction the wind is blowing by having you drop a handful of leaves to see where they blow, and this can be done anywhere, before your tee shot, during your fairway approach and even on the green.
Once you are on the green, you are guided with a grid, showing you just how much the green slants, giving you the option to either close a long gap between your lie on the green or go for that ultimate long drop into the cup in a single put. You can also however set the “gimme” radius, which for you non-golfers, is the term used for “if it is close enough to the hole, you technically sunk it”.
Sometimes, between holes, there are “mini events” that occur, where you either sit on a bench with your caddy and she feeds you chocolate, sit in your golf cart inspecting your scorecard or even stand on the beach listening to some music together. Im not exactly sure why this is a feature, but sometimes, if you are having a bad game, the break is welcomed. The caddy is annoying as all heck though, with a very repetitive dialog that is probably supposed to ease your tension, but she always ended up frustrating me more than anything else, and I even tried switching off the caddy feature, but sadly, that is not an option at all. Mainly because when I play golf, I choose to play alone, without a caddy. You can however change your caddy before starting your round, but they are all equally overly “cutesy” and bubbly…
Off The Course
There are so many other features off of the course. When you are in the clubhouse, you can choose to either hit the practice range for a bit or even inspect your overall progression and statistics. The game automatically records your shot accuracy, showing you whether your lie stroke either fades (pulls left) or draws (pulls right), which really does help you polish your game when going to the practice range. It also records your longest putt, longest drive, longest chip-in and a few other nifty things that you can use to reduce your handicap figure.
On the course, when you address the ball, you will know when the club is touching the ground by briefly vibrating the controller, that way, you can also gauge whether your shot will either hit the ball in the sweet spot, or either above or below the club, which will affect whether your stroke will be low, high or have that perfect low start and high curve shape for distance. Yes, gold is complicated out in the real world, but Everybody’s Golf, especially the VR rendition takes the complication away and gives you a seriously fun 3, 9 or 18 holes. As with any game, you begin with the basic offering, and need to progress through the game and rank up to unlock more features.
As your rank increases, you unlock more courses (three in total), more caddy’s and also better golf clubs. Out of the 3 different courses, I must say that my favorite two are the Beach side and Dinosaur (mountain range) Courses. You need to get to rank 5 to unlock a full 18 hole round, but this is not really a challenge, because the more you play, the faster you rank up, and time passes so quickly, that before you know it, you have easily played 3 rounds of 9 holes without even realizing it.
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Conclusion
Everybody’s Golf VR is developed by Clap Hanz and was released for the PSVR Game System on 22 May 2019. At the time of this review, Loot.co.za is selling a physical copy for R466.00, alternatively you can buy it digitally from the PlayStation Store for R469.00.. Whether you are a fan of Golf or not, this game is tonnes of fun and is guaranteed to uphold it’s party popularity rank.
