I have always been a fairly large fan of miniature golf. As a child, I loved the absurdly designed holes and brightly colored golf balls. Once I got a little older, I began to appreciate the skill involved in finding each hole’s optimal shot and trying to master it. When the Wii’s controller was initially announced, I had hoped that someone would create a miniature golf game for the system that would allow players to enjoy the hobby virtually by using realistic swinging mechanics. Unfortunately, while Carnival Games: MiniGolf does give players a virtual approximation of miniature golf; it sadly manages to fail more than it succeeds in being fun.
Players start off the game by choosing a character, either a child or adult of male or female persuasions. You can then customize your character’s appearance by choosing their shape, color, clothing, and golfing equipment. None of these options will actually affect your golfing skills, only your appearance. All of your options are also preset so there is actually no direct manipulation of any of these elements. The options are somewhat limited to begin with but playing through the title will earn you tokens that can be used to unlock additional items to choose from.
Once you’ve got your character’s look settled, you would think it’s finally time to hit the course for some miniature golf. Sadly, the single-player aspect of Carnival Games: MiniGolf doesn’t actually have any courses, traditionally speaking. Instead there are nine different themes to choose from, each containing three disjointed holes. These themes’ difficulties range from easy to hard, with the hard themes being unlocked by successfully completing the easy and medium ones.
Each theme consists of a trick shot hole, a challenge hole, and an adventure hole. For the trick shot hole, precision is the key to victory. These holes can require quite a bit of trial and error, as you need to sink your ball in one shot to complete it. This can be especially challenging considering you’ll often need to time your shots perfectly and even make use of ramps to send your ball skyward. Challenge holes are more traditional miniature golf affairs, with the lowest possible stroke count being your ultimate goal. Adventure holes are very similar to challenge holes, with one exception. In every adventure hole there is a, often obvious, shortcut to be found that can lead to a quick hole-in-one. When you hit this shortcut, you will need to complete a mini-game that fits the theme of the hole on which you are playing. Success will earn a hole-in-one while failure results in your ball being placed somewhere far from the cup on the course. These mini-games are fairly enjoyable, ranging from a point and fire on-rail ghost shooter to catching eggs in a moveable basket by tilting the Wii-mote.
While the basic hole designs are well done for the most part, the game’s controls ultimately guarantee frustration. Aiming your shots is easy, adjusting your stance and aim with the D-pad while raising and lowering the camera with the 1 and 2 buttons to get a better look at the hole’s layout. Once your shot is lined up, players will need to hold down the A button and swing the Wii-mote, releasing the A button to make contact with the ball. There is absolutely no backswing required so just flailing the controller in any direction will work. It is incredibly difficult to judge how much power you are putting on a swing. I performed the same swing three times without releasing the A button and each time it resulted in a different maximum power on the swing meter. This kind of inaccuracy is ridiculous considering how precisely you’ll need to hit balls in the game, especially during trick shot holes.
The shoddy swing recognition only further angers players when competing against the old-timey Barker character. When playing in single-player, players have the option to play each hole solo or against the always overly enthusiastic Barker. If you manage to beat him, you will be granted Barker tokens that can be used to purchase pieces of his outfit so that you can dress up like the character. I’m not sure why you’d want to do this but since it is incredibly difficult to be victorious, I suppose it doesn’t really matter. While you struggle to get the Wii-mote to detect your correct swing power, Barker will just hit the perfect shot nine out of ten times. As if the odds weren’t stacked against you enough, ties also count as losses, making the Barker tokens even more difficult to collect.
While trying not to overly generalize, this game is clearly aimed at a younger audience. This makes the horribly inaccurate controls and ridiculous difficulty all the more inexplicable. I’m not saying that game’s need to be easy to be enjoyed by younger players, but losing over and over again can get rather discouraging. Making matters worse is the way Barker himself acts after matches. If you lose or tie while playing against him, you are treated to an animation where he starts to hand over a token and then quickly pulls it away while laughing. This is not the way to treat people playing your game, especially when these losses are mostly the direct result of poorly implemented motion controls and unrealistically accurate opposition.
This game’s only real saving grace comes in the form of its multiplayer. Carnival Games: MiniGolf can be played with up to four players locally. You can choose to play three, six, or nine holes at a time. To achieve this, the game allows you to select the appropriate number of themes and then has you play their holes in order. This almost gives the feel of having courses, which are completely missing from the single-player experience. Players can wager items or just play for fun, not having to worry about failure since everyone’s controls are equally as unpredictable and unresponsive.
While I think the Wii is the perfect system for a great miniature golf game, this is clearly not it. While the graphics and hole designs are inviting, the frustrations caused by the controls and Barker himself successfully put a damper on the entire experience. Even if you do manage to stick with the game despite its faults, there are only twenty seven holes that will barely take a couple of hours to finish. After completion, the only things you are left with are trying to earn exorbitant amounts of tokens to unlock appearance changing items and the game’s multiplayer. Honestly, neither one of these options is enjoyable enough to make you overlook the game’s disappointing control issues.
RATING OUT OF 5 RATING DESCRIPTION 2.7 Graphics
While the characters all look fairly odd, the themes and holes are mostly bright and inviting. 1.2 Control
Aiming your shot is extremely easy, but controlling the strength of your shot is an exercise in aggravation. 2.0 Music / Sound FX / Voice Acting
The music and sound effects found in the game aren’t too bad, but every time Barker opens his mouth you will long for silence. 1.6
Play Value
A fairly decent multiplayer aspect isn’t enough to overcome the game’s incredibly short single-player experience and ridiculously clumsy and unresponsive swing detection.
1.6 Overall Rating – Avoid
Not an average. See Rating legend above for a final score breakdown.
Game Features: