Planet Minigolf Review

For a game that's supposed to be a relaxing family pastime, minigolf can certainly be maddening, can't it? One miscalculation and your ball is out of bounds, leaving you out of the game. Planet Minigolf on the PlayStation Network accurately recreates that feeling of frustration. It lacks a great control scheme and the "wacky" courses leave a lot of room for irreversible errors. Once you figure out a way to make the controls work for you and learn the ins and outs of the holes, though, Planet Minigolf does become fun.

The first thing you're going to want to do when firing up Planet Minigolf is turn off the commentator. Here are just a few of the insightful gems he offers up:

"Let's start this competition with the first hole."
"She sends the ball on its way."
"Here's the current score card."

Thanks, guy!

There are three control schemes to choose from: Easy, 3-Click, and Direct. Unfortunately, none of these are ideal. The problem with all of these is that it's tough to judge how hard you need to hit the ball. Planet Minigolf doesn't tell us how far we are from the hole or give us any indication of how much power is needed – it's all guess work, which leads to out of bounds balls and frustrated players.

Consider another (excellent) videogame golf title: Hot Shots Golf. It's not minigolf, but it is an arcade, lighthearted golf game closer to Planet Minigolf than Tiger Woods. In Hot Shots, you are always told how far you are from the hole and where your ball will theoretically land if all goes well -- even when putting on the green. Planet Minigolf doesn't give this information to the player. It's all too easy to make one bad shot and not be able to recover from it.

Each nine-hole course is split into three sections, and there is an obnoxious loading time in between each one. At the end of a hole you'll get a close-up of your golfer, but while I was playing occasionally the camera would get stuck behind a wall so I'd be staring at a piece of wood while my character celebrated out of sight.

OK, that's the bad news. Here's the good stuff. Once you've found the control method that works best for you and have played through a course a few times so that you start getting a sense of how to work it, Planet Minigolf is enjoyable. There is a cool trick shot system that awards points for certain feats like long putts or hole-in-ones. On each hole, you can activate a one-time skill shot that, if you make it in with the next putt, will award you extra points. These points will put you ahead of anyone you are tied for strokes with in the game, so the trick shot system basically adds another layer of strategy. There are also some fun power-ups that help a lot with keeping your stroke count down. They might make your ball super heavy so it doesn't bounce or give it a rocket boost.

By winning rounds of golf, you will be awarded keys that can unlock accessories for your character. Unfortunately, these unlockables aren't very exciting. Much more exciting is the course editor that gives you access to all the pieces in the game in order to create your own minigolf courses. Once your masterpiece is complete, you can publish it for others to try out.

Planet Minigolf was created by the makers of Zen Pinball, a fun video pinball game with a lot of nice community features. Similar community perks are included here, such as a news ticker on the title screen that tells you which players around the world are currently performing well and keeps you up to date on official weekly tournaments. You can also play multiplayer games both locally and online.