Mario Golf Advance Tour

I've always pined for good GBA games to slot into my DS Lite and just leave there. I love the notion that I can carry two games around in my DS at all times...it's like I'm cheating or something. The problem is GBA games, regardless of how good they are, seldom get played over whatever DS game I have inserted. I think the GBA title I played more than just a bit was Pokemon FireRed. I'm a pokenerd. Ultimately what happens is that I get tired of the GBA game sticking out (it bugs me, can't help it) and replace the little cap.

Not today! Or rather, not starting about three days ago! I got Mario Golf Advance Tour a few weeks back, but never bothered to play it...as I'm want to do with games entirely too often. I decided to really give this game a serious go and I'm glad I did. The first thing that struck me about the game was how much it looks like the Golden Sun games. Reviews revealed it was made by the same folks who did the Golden Sun series and I considered that a good thing.

MGAT (looks like a Microsoft certification acronym) plays a whole hell of a lot like an RPG. It's intended to do just that, but it does a good job of concealing the RPG elements from the player. I suppose any modernish golf game is a bit of an RPG if it has a Tour mode (or whatever golf game X calls it), but this game just has more of an RPG feel. You wander around a (small) world, the courses and mini-games being the dungeons. You gain experience for completing tasks, you find items in random jars and wardrobes (estimation), you're ultimately seeking out bosses to defeat them one-on-one. Sounds like an RPG to me.

The way MGAT does skill progression is kind of interesting. You spend experience to raise attributes, per the norm of any golf game. The caveat is that when you raise some stats, other stats are negatively affected. This mechanic is trying to force the player to have a fairly well-rounded character, I suppose. I didn't pay much mind to this little element of the game until I had somehow terribly shrunk my "sweet spot" (you know, that third-click area in a typical three-click golf game swing). Suddenly, if I wasn't hitting it perfectly, the ball was just careening off into oblivion. Hitting the fairway was a chore by itself. Lesson learn.

So, yeah, I like this 4-5 year old game of golf. Oh, it and taught me one thing about golf games which I didn't realize previously: putting should be easy. It's pretty damn easy in this game and I'm that much happier for it. I can three-putt in real life. I don't need that shit in a golf game. I wanna grip it and rip it, not agonize over a missed 6 footer.