Vertiginous Golf – Preview
Follow Genre: Sport, Indie
Developer: Kinelco & Lone Elk Creative
Publisher: Surprise Attack
Platform: PC

Vertiginous Golf – Preview

Good: Steampunk theme, details, challenging
Bad: Camera, lack of waypoints
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Let me be honest for a second here, guys and girls, golf games aren’t really my cup of tea. In my opinion they’re terribly monotonous and slow paced and it just doesn’t please me. What’s that? Why did I even bother to preview this game? Well, my fellow gamers, this is the game through which I came to appreciate golf.

verti logo

First of all, for a sports game, Vertiginous Golf has quite the introduction screen. You’ll be standing in front of what looks like a golf store / golf club and you’ll have to walk in to reach the menu screen. Everything you need can be found here as you can change the graphics and sound options or choose to play with up to four of your friends in local coöp.

After having arranged everything to my liking, the game asks me to take please in a chair at the side. Doing so teleports the player to the available golf courses.

A tutorial explains every bit of the game mechanics and it’s one of those where you’ll be playing while learning (so have no fear of having to read a wall of text). Currently you have to option to use a putter or a chipper, the difference being (for those like me who aren’t at home in the world of golf) that the chipper will propel your ball into the sky whereas the putter will keep it steady on the ground.

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You’ll learn that it’s possible to rewind time when a golf ball goes way out of line or even falls off course. This ability is so much needed that you soon won’t be able to think of this game without that feature! Besides manipulating time, golfers can make use of a little mechanic companion bird. With the push of a button you’ll be flying around which is particularly useful to get a nice view of the course which include all kinds of special obstacles to overcome: fans, jump pads, pipes, moving platforms and so on. That is what makes Vertiginous Golf exciting and fun to play, it doesn’t really feel like a golf game pur sang but more of an arcade kind of game where the goal is to complete a course in the least possible strokes. Don’t get me wrong though, even if it’s feels a lot less realistic than most golf games, you’ll find have quite a challenge here (or so my depleted rewind bar tells me).

After having gone through most of the course, you’ll get to the “green zone”. Here it’s obligatory that the player uses the putter instead of the chipper (which is kind of normal as the green zone is situated in a roofed building where a chipper wouldn’t do much good). The green zone is the last sprint to the end hole and it’s often tricky to make a perfect stroke as the hole is guarded by moving objects.

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The music played in the background is very relaxing and fits the mood perfectly. Something very cool concerning this part of the game is the fact that the music is produced by those old phonograph horns from decennia ago and the distance between you and the mechanism has an effect on how loud the music sounds. Details like that prove that the makers have really put a lot of thinking in this project.

The steampunk theme of the game is quite extraordinaire for a sports title but it looks very good. A lot of different colors are used which make the game look “alive” and generally pleasant to look at.

Something that was not very cooperating, is the camera which made aiming properly a lot harder in corners or at certain obstacles and the fact that it’s often quite hard to see where you should be going next. Although you can get an overview with the bird or by pressing B (which gives you an overview of the entire course) I’d like to see some kind of indication added without having to go out of your “golf club view”.

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Conclusion

For an Early Access title Vertiginous Golf looks very, very promising. The hard core of the game is already present so playing at this moment is no never ending bug fest but an enjoyable build to spend your time on. The developers plan to make the game compatible with Virtual Reality headsets as well as implement a lot more courses and other features like customization and daily challenges.

 

VN:F [1.9.22_1171]
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