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Sid Meier's SimGolf

Sid Meier's SimGolf

List Price: $9.99
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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Why are you reading this review
Review: While you read this review you are missing out on valuable time you could be playing this game. This game by the makers of The Sims is on par with fun. You make a golf course then you can change the holes, or even play your own golf tournament. That is right; you can play your own golf course as you could with Roller Coaster. It is like 2 games in one. This game also has many different possible courses so replay is endless. You also don't need to look for those codes to get more money; there is a mode where you can play with infinite money where you try to get your fun and skill rating up. You can even sell homes to Movie and Music Stars on your golf course. I knew that the programmers at EA were having a lot of fun creating this game when a "Britney Agulara" bought one of my lakeside homes. I also enjoyed playing a 9 hole tournament against a "Fuzzy Navel". I am not joking if you play this game, you will come across many funny names including the ones I have mentioned here. This game is a lot of fun!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Fun and addictive!
Review: I'm not a golf fan, really, but I do really enjoy sim games; give me a strategy game -- especially of the god game variety -- and I'm happy.

I picked this game up on a whim, both because I appreciate most of Sid Meier's games, and because it just looked like it might be fun to play with.

I wasn't disappointed. I've been playing it addictively and staying up far too late building my course.

This is a highly addictive game, quite easy to learn, and it's amusing to watch the sims run about ranting and raving and enjoying themselves. Part of the challenge is getting the layout of the course done logially; so far I end up making circular tracks, although there is an option to renumber your holes later on. With the limited land available initially until you earn the right to buy more, you need to be cautious in your creations. Once you get the hang of it, you can design award-winning holes effortlessly. the hardest part is meeting all the criteria of imagination, difficulty and length -- I haven't yet figured out what makes an imaginative hole. (Indeed, some of my holes that I thought were easier have ended up labeled heroic!) You can take your pro to play your own holes, but it's slow and sometimes annoying, without much finesse needed -- all you must do is shoose the type of shot, point and click.

The game does have its faults. As someone else mentioned, the exit screen is far too long, and I usually end up leaving something running in the background so I can alt-tab over to it to let it close without looking it. It occasionally crashes out on my XP Pro machine whehn I try to run a tournament, but I suspect that's due to the fact that I have a really low powered and old video card in it right now, so shouldn't be taken as gospel. At work, I didn't have any trouble at all.

It can also be too easy -- I've made millions on my second course, playing in normal mode. I made as many on the first, playing in easy. It can get repetitive, with doing the different holes on different sites, but it seems like if you make a plan to have different flavors at each, you can make it enjoyable for yourself.

In sum, while it's not a perfect game, it's an enjoyable management game without the hassle of games such as SimCoaster or other games that require micromanagement. There's no micromanagement needed here, and I'm comfortable letting my sims work through their difficulties with the holes initially to get to enjoy them more. Try it, if you're into Simulation and management games; you'll like it!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: ADDICTING & FUN
Review: As an admitted hater of computer games, I have to admit that this is a very fun & addicting game. SIM GOLF combines the strategy of money management with the fun of competition. Build a good golf course and the members will flock to your resort. But beware, the more people that become members translate to the more employees you need to hire to compete with their demands. Make your members happy and they spend more money.This is a fun game for a rainy day as you can lose track of time and play for hours.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Sid Meier has yet to disappoint me!
Review: I'm a big fan of Sid Meier's previous games - Civilization and Civ II being some of my all-time favorites! I can't even count the number of hours I've spent playing those two games - probably well in to the hundreds. Anyways, I normally would never pick up a golf game, I don't usually play sport-type games, but since it had Sid Meier's name on it I decided to give it a try. I was not disappointed!

It plays like most other Sim/Tycoon games - you start with your basic empty plot of land and build it up to a huge golf course. You build golf holes, hire staff, get different buildings and attractions (driving range, etc). One feature that I really enjoyed was selling plots of land to celebrities - they're a lot of fun to watch! You also can play in a tournament against another golfer, which is pretty easy. I am not skilled at golf games, so I enjoyed it a lot because it was not too complicated.

Another fun feature is to watch the patrons of your course.. because sometimes they'll start on a funny story. If you watch them the entire time they're golfing, they'll keep going on with the story. If they finish (a sign of a good course I guess!) then you get a special prize (some kind of decorative item usually).

I was surprised I enjoyed this game as much as I did. I played it for several days exclusively, but haven't played it since. It doesn't have the longevity that some other games do (namely the Sims for me), but it did keep my attention for many hours over the course of a few days and for the price, I say its worth it!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Not addicting, but still entertaining
Review: Links and other golf-realism fans look elsewhere. This is not about accurate golf. It's a money management and resource gathering sim along the lines of Theme Park or Sim-Coaster. Those expecting this to be as involved or detailed as Meier's Civilization or Alpha Centauri games will also be disappointed. It's not necessarily challenging, but still fun to play.

Like most games of this type, you start out with a blank piece of land and a small sum of money and your job is to build up your course hole by hole until you raise enough money to err... go on to another blank piece of land. Detail is sacrificed for simplicity in this game. You can raise/lower terrain, add fairway, green and various traps rather intuitively but you can't make the sandtrap the exact shape you are looking for. You can win awards for a number of different achievements such as completing dog-leg holes or hitting the 9 and 18 hole marks. As your course becomes popular and the money starts pouring in, you can also sell prime real estate which celebrities such as "Curtis Weird" will move into.

Once you get a hole or two built, you can open your course to the familiar Sims who travel the course, speaking their gibberish, and showing their enthusiasm (or disgust) at your creation. A well designed course is also necessary to impress the city officials who, after a pleasing round of golf, will allow you to buy additional parcels of land to expand your course. If your course is particularly well designed, a pair of sims will start an elaborate story you can follow along with as they play. A pair may fall in love, start a business together, or whatever. If the story reaches a conclusion, a bonus item (usually some kind of course decoration) will drop from the sky and on to the course. It's interesting to follow, but after about four or five stories, they'll start to repeat themselves.

A weaker aspect of the game is the tournaments you play against fellow sims to build up your skills such as putting, driving, etc... It's *very* basic. You may make a mouse click or two on the initial drive, but the computer takes over from there right down to the final putt. You might as well be rolling dice. I wonder why it was ever incorporated into the game.

It's a very easy game, so if you're looking for a challenge straight out of the box, skip the normal level and go straight to difficult. There's also a nice feature that allows you to import your face in the game; the readme.txt file details how to do it. It's tricky, but you can import three different faces (happy, normal, mad) using a program that edits .bmp files (such as Paint Shop or Microsoft's Photo Editor). Then your face will appear in the giant photo of yourself as you pull up your character's statistics (I was hoping my mug would appear in the game itself, but alas...)

I killed an entire evening playing this game right out of the box. It sucks you in very quickly with its simplicity. However I don't find myself coming back to it that much the way I did playing The Sims. Perhaps it's because it's easy or maybe it's just because I'm sure I've probably seen everything already. So the next chunk of land is a wooded area instead of a tropical beach. What's the use of continuing if you're just going to create another course and listen to the same jabbering sims over and over again?

Still, if you ever wished you create your own Pebble Beach or Mauna Kea resort, this game delivers.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Demo alone is 5 stars.
Review: Having read some interesting press on this game, I decided to download the demo. For the record, I like SimCity, Alpha Centauri, and other games these designers have separately participated in. I am not a big fan of The Sims, however, as I find it repetitive. The Demo starts out a lot like Roller Coaster Tycoon, another favorite of mine. If that had been it, I would have stopped there and stuck with RCT. However, working out the course design is wickedly fun and engrossing, with some interesting tools to help (including graphs of how the golf ball will behave in the hands of SimGolfers of different skill). I played the Demo solidly for 4 hours without realizing it. The fact that you can "play" a round of golf and select shots for your SimGolf pro (with shades of "The Sims" like personality selection) makes this even more addictive.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Best "Tycoon" Simulation I Have Ever Played!
Review: In short, this was the best simulation of a real life "tycoon" sort of game I have ever played. The game allows people who do not play golf to enjoy the exiting aspect of it, and actually play in-game tournaments and matches agaisnt pro's

At first, the most appealing thing of the game to me as a pre-teen was the "Sim" name in the title. Once I started playing, I couldnt stop. I loved the challenge of pleasing my members, the real life golf things like the hazards, and I enjoyed the actual golf games and skills you had.

In short, I loved this game, and I can see why "Sim" is still a leading producer of excellent simulation games!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: An overall good game
Review: This is a pretty good game. then why four stars? Well, I was really disapointed when i saw the graphics, i was expecting them to be better than what they are. i didn't play this game more than an hour a day, and it still only took me three days to master it. i played it for two weeks and it got too easy, so i went back to the ps2. when i first got it all i really wanted to do is play my course, but it doesn't take long to master that area. its always easy to make the first ten holes, but then it gets tricky to fit in the rest of the holes, and you start making all these crazy and extremely short holes that the players don't like. i recomend doing sandbox mode first, it really teache yu how to fit in your holes. but it doesn't teach you how to spend you money. but it only takes me three years to be a millionair now. if you don't play computer every day of the week, you will enjoy playing this game.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great Game -- But Don't Expect More Updates
Review: I love this game. I have enjoyed participating in some of the online forums where you can share courses with other people, and download their courses. I've enjoyed the challenge of trying to improve my Skill stats. I even (sort of) enjoy playing the courses, especially high Imagination courses.

Unfortunately, Firaxis and EA have abandoned this game. There are bug fixes that ,while minor, should be fixed. There are features that need to be added. But it won't happen. The only additions that you will be able to find are those that have been created by the SimGolf community itself.

The game has promise. Too bad it's been abandoned so soon after it's birth.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Spare yourself (and your computer) the grief...
Review: The demo for this game {if one could call it that) was on the Sims Hot Date, or some expansion for the Sims. It seemed pretty fun, and since they restricted you to 3 courses, I really wanted to know what it was like to build a big golf resort. And so, I got caught in the trap. I went out and bought Sim Golf... The worst waste of money in my life. I quickly became bored with the different buildings (there are so few!), and although the course building tool was kind of interesting, it was far from addicting...The actual golfing aspect of the game required no skill, and the houses you build for celebrities are a plain waste of time...It is a plain waste of time, money, and of course, megabytes. I can't wait 'till the Sims Superstar comes out...Don't make the same mistake I did, and get a better game. This is just a plain disgrace.


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