World Golf Tour Review

I have to admit, I've been a golf game fan for a very long time. Although this may date me a bit I remember playing Links, Links LS and Links386 like it was yesterday.  As the video game consoles caught up and subseqently passed computers in performance I became a fan of the Tiger Woods golf series. 

I recently was invited to try the beta of World Golf Tour.  They promised to deliver HD quality graphics with no download required.  On that count they delivered.  The graphics are really quite good.  I was shocked to see photo-realistic qualty graphics delivered by a Flash based application. 

The beta focuses on a "Closest to the Pin" challenge Kiawah island golf course.  Prior to beginning the game runs you through a very well done tuturial.  Not being a fan of tuturials I skipped it the first time and then couldn't quite figure out how to swing the golf club in the game.  So back to the tutorial it was.  The tutuorial took about 3 minutes to complete and nicely illustrated how to swing the golf in this game.  The first thing that I noticed that was missing was the normal "click - click - click".  The 1st click to start your backswing, the 2nd click to stop your backswing and the third click to determine how straight your shot was isn't used on World Golf Tour.  They use a much more controlled swing system to allow you accurately determine the power of your swing and then force you to concentrate on your accuracy.  I really like their swing UI.  It's easy to learn and lets you focus on the hardest part of golf - accuracy.

I played a few holes and closest that I got to the pin was 8 feet (after about 25 tries).  I'm looking forward to the entire game so I can see what putting will be like.  Aiming in putting usually makes or breaks a good golf game.

Bottomline - if you like Golf Simulators - it appear that you are going to really like World Golf Tour.  I'm looking forward to the full release.