GameSpot.com Loves SimGolf!
"If you play computer games, or even if you don't, you should play SimGolf. If you develop, publish, or market computer games, you should play SimGolf. Here's why."
Everybody Should Play SimGolf
If you missed it, Sid Meier's SimGolf has been released, and we put up our review a little while ago. If you don't know what it is, here's a brief summary: SimGolf is a very fun, very easy-to-learn game that lets you build your own golf course and play as your own pro golfer. If you're simply looking for a good game to play, I'd recommend it--you can find out exactly why in the full review. But it's also a rather important game in its own right, since it was so intelligently designed and has so much going for it. If you play computer games, or even if you don't, you should play SimGolf. If you develop, publish, or market computer games, you should play SimGolf. Here's why.
For starters, SimGolf is accessible in just about every way that counts. The game has two main components: building your own golf course and playing rounds with your own custom pro. Both are easy to learn and lots of fun to play out. Also, SimGolf doesn't look or sound like much, which means it can't compete visually with games like Max Payne or Medal of Honor, but it can also run on pretty much any kind of computer. That's not to say that games should look and sound mediocre--unimpressive graphics and sound never make a game better, but they can make a game accessible to a broader section of the populace. Additionally, SimGolf is completely nonviolent, it's reasonably priced at $40 MSRP (it could've stood to be a bit cheaper, but it does have considerable replay value), and it can be found just about everywhere.
More importantly, SimGolf is loads of fun. Anyone who writes anything in the game industry--editors like me, developers who write columns or designer diaries, and everyone else--will go on and on about how easy it is to get bogged down developing different aspects of games and lose sight of making games fun to play. But SimGolf actually delivers in this regard. Despite its many minor problems, it's lots of fun. Honest-to-goodness fun. The game's course-building component is simple and remarkably engaging, and the process of designing a course for your little computer people using the game's colorful landscaping tools is interesting--it's especially rewarding when the golfers on your course play through it as you intended. And though some golf purists might disagree, I believe that SimGolf's golfing component strips away just about everything that a non-purist might find to be tedious about golf. You don't manually choose your clubs or worry about wind factor, and you can select the power you want to put behind your strokes with a simple mouse-driven approximation that doesn't require you to scrutinize your swing down to the last pixel. And even though SimGolf is great for spending a relaxing afternoon building the perfect golf course, it's just as good for a quick diversion--not just for building a quick nine-hole course (which can take as little as 10-15 minutes), but also for its tournament mode, which lets your golfer compete for prize money on any course you've already made.
That you can expand upon your games of SimGolf with downloadable themes and courses built by other players is icing on the cake. What's more important is that SimGolf already packs in four different themes and 16 different maps right out of the box, which is plenty for you to get started and enough to keep you busy for a while without having to futz around with extra downloads. In addition to packing in a lot of value right out of the box, SimGolf is easy to learn, easy to play, easy to fit into your schedule, easy to get working on almost any computer, and completely nonviolent. And most importantly, it's lots of fun. I wouldn't be surprised if SimGolf does phenomenally well because, if you think about it, it's the kind of game that should do well, and it's the kind of game that many developers and publishers could probably learn a thing or two from.