Welcome to Modojo, 
Mario Golf: Advance Tour Review
Written by Modojo Staff on Monday, January 31, 2005
A great handheld golfing experience.
Music sends you to sleepyville.
...Continued From Page 1 That's for amateurs though, and you're no amateur! If you hit B when measuring your power, you'll now have the chance to input special button combos when the meter returns to zero. Want to put a backspin on it? Hit B twice. How about a topspin? Hit A twice.
There are also more advanced moves that aren't hard to pull off. Want a "super" backspin? Hit B, then A. Now the tricky part... do you want a "super" topspin? Guess what? Hit A, then B. Overall, these special moves are vital to advancing through the game's later courses and many of the harder side games.
In fact, even with the advanced techniques and harder courses, the game can be extremely easy to play. After a few hours, my character was hitting balls well over 300 yards, easily scoring ten under par in the first two courses. In fact, the golfer closest to me was two over par. It's not a very challenging game until the very last course, but even then the long-term difficulty is relegated to addicts who want to score 100% of the game's goals.
Even if the gameplay may get a little stale, Mario Golf: Advance Tour looks great from start to finish. The game is colorful and full of nice, if subtle, animation. The different hills and contours of each hole is clearly laid out, and there's even a nifty 3D view that's strikingly reminiscent of the GameCube game.
Audiophiles will find a mixed bag, though. The speech in the game is great, and the sounds effects are spot-on. Unfortunately, the music can get on your nerves. While the tunes may be catchy, they quickly turn sour after 45 minutes of the same few notes. Still, no one buys Game Boy Advance or golf games for their music!
Mario Golf: Advance Tour does a few things I didn't expect. It offers an extremely fun game of golf with a deep enough Story Mode to keep players involved for hours on end. It also leaps over the GameCube version with its additions, and stays as true to golf as any other video game out there, complete with 3D aspects to each hole. The last thing I really didn't expect? It kept me on the GBA for several non-consecutive hours. Playing golf. For those that know this hardcore basketball fan, that's a tremendous feat in itself.
