One of the weirder things about Mario Golf: Super Rush is that purely from a mechanical perspective it demands more technical play than PGA Tour 2k21. Or, I should say, the subset of PGA Tour 2k21 that we play. For the mostly social way we play the latter game generally, Amateur Swing Timings and the raft of variables and interpretations of the game state provide ample opportunities to fail because it is still fuckin' Golf. We strip out putt previews, which are normal at that level, but if you want to play the game something like a sim that strips away UI elements related to swing timing and scourges you for your shortcomings that game is in there also. Mario Golf, by comparison, is… Mario Golf, the irreducible sigil. They can add things to it - lightning, or rain, or super shots, or running-around-very-fast, but the baseline has some heft. The ball feels like it's the size of a cantaloupe and the cup seems like a salad bowl but it's still tricky.
I've played a lot more Speed Golf since last week, and it has a couple variables you can tweak, but the mode just makes sense to me now. Once I can set down a bunch of my shit about what golf is - made easier by the fact that it also includes that, elsewhere in the product - you can do three holes in like seven minutes. Sometimes, people set up matches like that. I've never seen higher than nine. But even nine, judging from my time playing with Gary, is like fifteen minutes. I also like it because I can put up numbers, though there are always those who seek to diminish my great works.
The only time it's not fun is
a) when I run super fast with my boost ability directly into a fucking lake, or
b) when someone realizes after a bad hole that they can have more fun this round by taking the full five minutes allotted to walk leisurely around the source and sightsee. Ironically, this is definitely, unambiguously golf shit. Walking, I mean. But taking too long on a hole in real golf will get you yelled at; in. And since everyone else is playing Speed Golf, a game about playing golf quickly, you just get to watch them wander the course for this period. And then, you're gonna be like, "Well, at least they can only steal five minutes of my time this way per hole, at least we'll finish the round," but after they've done the first thing they will do the second thing, which is disconnect. There are probably things they can do to give players some ability to exile these tricksters but even gentle Nintendo hasn't managed to sand down human nature.
(CW)TB out.
