Golf Zero, or How John McClane Would Win The Masters
Tiger Woods is the single biggest reason I ever played a golf video game. Where he compelled the likes of Marcus Armitage and Jordan Spieth to hit the links professionally, my interest was purely in digital greens. His face of triumph in the cover - the gleeful cheer of victory bellowing from his lips, the subtle fire of vengeance in his eyes - made me ask a question I never thought I'd ask. Is golf actually awesome? Because Tiger is making it seem lit af.
I'd later learn that the hype was more about a mixed race prodigy making it big in one of the country’s last awkwardly racist sports establishments. The game itself is meditative at best, groan-inducing at worst. Even an older me, wised and worn by time into a tortoise that accepts that slow and steady can indeed win races, can't find space on my DVR for it.
I'd play the shit out of golf video games, though. Something about the emphasis on strategy and execution of deceptively difficult techniques was appealing so long as I didn't have to stand outside and do it. As time would pass, so would my interest in then, too. Golf games vanished from my backlog years ago. Everything was fine. Then Colin Lane and Brad Erkkila had to go fuck that up.
Calling Golf Zero a golf game is like calling Die Hard a Christmas movie. The setting is just a clever back drop for the real business - brain-breakingly clever action. Your Little Yellow Bastard of an avatar is a pre-balding John Maclane, flying by the seat of his pants to make the impossible happen with mixed results. And staring at the 41st hole makes me want throw someone off of a very tall roof.
But I couldn’t put it down. For hours, I kept coming back, pushing against it’s devilish difficulty until that Dark Souls-ian “a-ha!” moment breaks through. Then back down the rabbit hole again. No TV cop-turned-movie cop to gas me up while I crawl through the vents if this death machine.
Each stage tasks you to navigate its puzzles and drop a ball into a hole. It's much like miniature golf in that way, except you must duck under the windmills and bank around corners on foot, and toss the ball in manually. All while defying gravity’s insistence on skewering you on spikes or drowning you in deadly waters. Each hole is a death labyrinth that rivals Dr. Eggman in its dauntless sadism. It makes me wonder if Lane went to the same school as the Sonic villain. Or if he needs a hug.
The difficulty curves somewhat elegantly. You feel the pressure in the early dozen or so holes but it’ll take until the mid twenties before the ugly begins to seep through. Jumping over spinning buzz-saws and through narrow holes is replaced eventually by John Woo style wall running and trick shooting. And even after your fifteenth attempt, you’ll realize that you missed the bonus red balloon or used too many balls to succeed, and now a bronze medal sits where a gold should. It’s dull and burnished glow mocking you in every way.
Most of my experience comes from the grind house of the Grass Islands, a Trojan Horse of beauty that is filled to the brim with hate and malice. A second expansion world, the Sonic-y sounding Sunset Hills - is chock full of recognizable tortures, but adds it's own new circles of hell. In one stage, not only must you make the fire walk of doom to unite ball with balloon and hole, but now you must do so before a nefarious nega-you beats you to it. This adversary is like Argyle, but instead of waiting in the Nakatomi parking garage for your signal, he just wants to run you over with the company limo.
Losing because I’m not good enough is just a fact of my life, and I think I deal with it well, mostly. But Golf Zero makes the pain of defeat sting that much more by requiring you to watch an advertisement after a group of restarts. That time alone with the weight of your uselessness is more damning than the seven seconds it took me to get to that army building sim advert. I’m almost tempted to follow the anime titty lady to some other field of battle where the game makes less sense, but at least it plays it for me and spares me the emotional turmoil.
But still, I persist.
Even with it’s excessive floaty-ness and its sometimes sketchy responsiveness, the biggest complaint I have is with the ads. And I can’t be too upset, but someone’s gotta pay these psychopaths for their colorful, quirky torture device.
When I walked into Golf Zero, I was exuberant about the challenge. I was confident in my abilities and stalwart in my attack on the puzzle platformer’s most strident sequences, ready for my 1997 Masters moment. Now if you find me on the side of the road battered and weary, just pass me by. Golf Zero’s small screen brilliance will chew you up and spit you out.
