What happens when you cross the Crash mode from Burnout with PGA Tour Golf? It is not the most logical of cross overs but you can guarantee there will be plenty of chaos, destruction and perhaps a missed putt or two. This is possibly the most fun you can have with a golf ball; unless you take your golf very seriously. Or unless you are paying for all the damage caused.
As with proper golf, you start on the tee and the aim is to get the ball into the hole. The big difference in Dangerous Golf is that nobody gives a hoot what your handicap is or how many shots it took you to get the ball into the hole. All you need to bother here is just how much damage you can cause before you sink that putt. And in all the chaos it can be easy to forget you still need to get the ball in the hole.
Instead of teeing off down the fairway in the great outdoors, you will mostly find yourself inside and missing any form of grass at all. A real golf course doesn’t offer much room for destruction so that would just be boring. You will be teeing off in locations such as bathrooms, kitchens or rooms clearly from a house whose owner can probably afford to buy his own golf course. You won’t need to bother yourself with mundane things like club selection or wind direction here, just aim and destroy.
Each hole starts with a flyover which allows you to survey the lie of your ball, to use some golf talk. What you are looking for here is items which can cause the most amount of damage. In proper golf you find yourself aiming in the general direction of the hole but in Dangerous Golf the source of the most damage is what you want to aim for. Who cares where the hole is when there is a big stack of plates waiting to be smashed?
Each hole I have played so is essentially a par 3; a tee shot, a fairway shot and a putt if you will. And yes I know that is different to proper golf where it would be a tee shot and 2 putts. There are another couple of differences to proper golf. Firstly you want to use all 3 shots as more shots leads to more destruction which adds up to a high score. The other difference is that you need to earn that fairway shot. The fairway shot is called a Smashbreaker and to bag that you need to meet the destruction target which makes your tee shot crucial. For an added bonus, the Smashbreaker shot sees your ball ignite quite literally into a ball of flames.
You have full control over the ball’s direction as it is in flight but physics and gravity to apply so it is always easier to ‘steer’ in the direction the ball is going rather than trying to make it go completely in the opposite direction. When the ball comes to a rest after your tee or fairway shot then it is time to putt. With the devastation it might not be so easy to see where the hole is so there is a handy little button which will highlight it for you. When the ball is in the hole you score is based on the destruction you have caused and you can cause an awful lot of destruction. I’ve managed over £2m worth of damage in one hole. You have one putt and should you miss then your score gets halved and that can be very costly.
As the ball flies all over the place wrecking everything in its path I do find it hard not to snigger away like a naughty school boy who knows he is doing wrong. There is something quite satisfying about wrecking absolutely everything in sight and looking at the aftermath thinking, I did that… with a golf ball.
Your score is based on the financial damage you have caused so it really does pay to trash everything and aim for the most expensive looking items. Like with Burnout, there are signature moves there to be discovered which add bonus points. Bonus points are also awarded for meeting the objective for the hole. This tends to be related to destroying all items of a specific type and is sometimes easier said than done. Other times you’ll nail the objective without even trying. Bronze, silver. Gold and platinum medals are awarded based on your score. As with the objectives, at times you will get the platinum with minimal effort and other times you’ll struggle to even get the bronze.
There are some other variations in holes and objectives which crop up to try and keep things fresh. There is a putting section with a room and many holes. You have 3 balls in which to putt into every hole, miss a hole and miss a ball. And with score based mechanics you will have to improvise to nail the big scores. Some holes have a time limit in which to get the putt done so you need to keep an eye on that clock. There is also a secret sauce bottle to be found in each location. I’ve stumbled across 2 of them without even knowing what they actually look like.
With over 100 holes for the single player there is a lot to destroy. The game also caters for offline and online multiplayer action but that would all be too sociable for me.
There is a lot of fun to be had with Dangerous Golf but it can get a little repetitive so is best suited to short bursts rather than lengthy sessions. Graphically it is a nice looking game and the destruction is impressive. It is not quite as much fun as Burnout’s Crash mode but there is still a lot of enjoyment to be had from wrecking everything in sight. And it feels nothing like golf so don’t be put off if you are not a golf fan.
Dangerous Golf
Pros
- It has that Burnout style
- Different objectives keep things fresh
- fun in short bursts
Cons
- Can get repetitive
- Not quite as much fun as Burnout’s Crash mode
