GameSpot Newsletter Reviews SimGolf

"If SimGolf had some sort of tangible, vertebrate manifestation, I would marry it."

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I'd like to take some time this week to reiterate something that Andrew Park talked about in last week's GameSpotting--namely, the insidiously addictive experience that is Sid Meier's SimGolf.

Like most of the GameSpot staff, I don't consider myself a console gamer exclusively. I have as many fond memories of playing Command & Conquer over the ancient and archaic Kahn player-matching service as I do of playing Super Mario Bros. 3. While I generally invest more time and money into console games these days, PC games still get some play. In fact, the last three games I've purchased for my personal collection have been PC games; the last console game to snake its way into my collection was Final Fantasy X, who's time-robbing abilities are bested only by Sid Meier's SimGolf. I would've probably called you an out-and-out liar if you had told me that I would miss social engagements, lose countless hours of sleep, and be perpetually tardy to everything because I didn't have enough holes with a high imagination rating, and there were dandelions sprouting up all over hole 12. But this is exactly what has happened.

If you ignore the fact that it's a game where the focus isn't even playing golf, but rather building and maintaining a better golf course, the game has the pedigree to back up its powerful addictivitude (sic). Sid Meier is one of the godfathers of PC gaming, whose name is evoked with exalted reverence by die-hard PC strategy fans. But to be frank, it's impossible for me to get into most modern PC strategy games. To paraphrase the wise and mighty Greg Kasavin, the modern RTS assumes you are intimately familiar with the conventions of every single RTS ever made, from Warcraft on up. They are decidedly exclusive, instead of inclusive.

SimGolf, on the other hand, is the exact opposite. When I first installed it, I figured I'd mess around with it for a couple of minutes and make sure everything was working correctly before going and wandering through the Calm Plains in Final Fantasy X. Instead, I blinked, and it was 3:00am (that's six hours later, for those of you who weren't there). My resident golf pro, Shooter McGavin, had just played a winning round on my burgeoning greens, taking some hotshot for $20,000, which I planned on using to build a new snack bar. I was like a petty god, dictating the flow of scenic waters, deciding if I should station the landscape maintenance guy near hole three or hole five or if I should just fire him outright. This pretty well represents how I've spent a lot of my nights, weekend and otherwise, since installing SimGolf.

The whole thing has left me confused. While I've been known to enjoy the occasional golf game, I've never really considered myself a fan of the sport, certainly not to the point that I could derive any pleasure from designing a golf course. My only hands-on experiences with golf have been at driving ranges and mini-golf courses, both of which have proved that proficiency in video games has no impact on the real world and that I should probably never be allowed to touch a real golf club. The game isn't terribly kind on the eyes, with a limited 800x600 resolution, choppy scrolling, and a slew of graphical quirks. It's not the graphics; it's not the subject matter. The draw of SimGolf is that the game is just inexplicably fun. Fun fun fun. If SimGolf had some sort of tangible, vertebrate manifestation, I would marry it.

So, if you missed Andrew's column last week, allow me to recap. If you own a computer with a 300MHz Intel Pentium II or better, 64MB RAM, 300MB free hard drive space, and Windows 98/Me/2000/XP, and you have an inordinate amount of spare time, then you should be playing SimGolf.