What The Golf? (Switch) Review

There are around 1000 golf-themed or mini-golf games on the Nintendo Switch eShop. What the Golf isn’t a golf game, not really – but at the same time you’ll be playing a lot of golf over your journey through this absurdist title.

What The Golf features a white ball; there are golf clubs and there are holes with pins in it. To start it’s pretty vanilla, get the ball into the hole. The vanilla doesn’t last long; however, as the game ramps up the absurdity and very quickly, it soon doesn’t become golf at all.

You go from getting the ball into the hole; to being the golf clubs, to being a bowling ball trying to knock down pins. Then you’re a house, an explosive barrel, you’re playing other sports – all while playing “golf”. I’m not going to list everything that happens in the game, part of the game is seeing the world theme, and figuring out what you have to do. When you complete a level you’ll get a pun about what you just did, figuring out that is half the fun. It’s almost a reverse Wario Ware in this way, instead of it telling you what to do at the start, it does it at the end.

You go from getting the ball into the hole; to being the golf clubs, to being a bowling ball trying to knock down pins. Then you’re a house, an explosive barrel, you’re playing other sports – all while playing “golf”. I’m not going to list everything that happens in the game, part of the game is seeing the world theme, and figuring out what you have to do. When you complete a level you’ll get a pun about what you just did, figuring out that is half the fun. It’s almost a reverse Wario Ware in this way, instead of it telling you what to do at the start, it does it at the end.

Playing the game is pretty easy, power your shot, pick where it goes using the touch screen or using buttons. Later courses even take it further by adding in gyroscope controls and will ask you to remove it from the dock (you can turn them off if you want). You see there isn’t just isometric golfing action here; there’s golf on a 2D plain, first-person golf, racing golf and many many more ideas. Each stage as well has three ranks, the first one you play through, a second one has you aiming for par and then a third one that has a further twist on the level giving you a crown. You don’t need to collect all of the crowns, but you’ll get a trophy along the way for each world if you do.

What the Golf also draws inspiration from several video games on some levels. There’s an entire world dedicated to Super Hot where the enemies only move as you do, there are homages to Super Mario Bros, Portal, Metal Gear Solid, a golfing take on Flappy Bird and Guitar Hero as well. These references aren’t there to be some ‘How do you do, fellow kids’ moment, but instead, they take ideas from other games and apply them golf in weird. You’ll burst through the main campaign in a handful of hours, going back to get all of the crowns will take a little longer.

What the Golf on the Switch also adds a local two-player mode. The two people play through a set of random levels competitively, and at the end face-off in an arena that changes every time. The points you’ve gained by winning stages up until the arena is your health. It’s a lot of fun and a great addition to the package.

There’s also a daily challenge which takes a selection of levels from the game every day. There’s a leaderboard to see who can complete the days challenge with the lowest number of strokes. Another fun thing the game has is a “show a friend mode” which runs through the game’s intro and a set of fundamental levels.

The game runs fine on the Switch as well, despite it looking rather simple a lot is going on in some stages. There’s a tiny bit of slow-down here or there but nothing to stop you finishing the game. The game’s soundtrack is mellow and just as silly as the rest of the game and parts of it have been stuck in my head for days.

There’s a lot of fun to be had in What The Golf. Don’t like golf? Neither does the game itself; the golf is just the delivery method for some entertaining puzzles. I don’t often go back and go for full completion with games, but What the Golf made me do this for the first time in a while. Great fun from beginning to end.

Rating: 4.5/5