The Earth is in ruins. Humans have made it completely unlivable and have moved en masse to a new planet, Mars, under the supervision of a multinational corporation called not too coincidentally Tesla. Over the years, the super rich of the red planet have begun to return to the wreckage of their old world to ... play golf. Already the image of someone fighting boredom by throwing balls into the hole on the corpse of his house, where billions of people have died, has something disturbing, but, as we will see in the Wasteland Golf Club review, is not content with offering a mannered cynicism and is able to do much more: to tell the story of the collapse of humanity.
Game mechanics
Le game mechanics of Golf Club Wasteland are very simple and follow those of many similar titles (thought of Golf on Mars, just to name): the protagonist, a pot-bellied astronaut of whom we initially know nothing, must hit the ball with his golf club hole in the fewest number of shots possible. The action is framed horizontally, with the hole being shown by an initial overview and then becoming freely observable. Of course our nameless golfer will always find himself where the ball is and, after each shot, he will fly with his jetpack to reach it. To shoot, just hold down the left mouse button and drag it to decide the strength and direction of the shot. The stronger the shot, the more the imprecision increases, represented by the flickering of the interface. That's all. There are no clubs to change or other internal factors to consider, such as golfer characteristics. In short, we are faced with a very simple title to play, at least from the control side.
To be complicated, often very complicated, are the holes, which soon reveal one of the hidden natures of Golf Club Wasteland: that of real puzzle game.
Apart from the first courses, which are quite linear, the following ones represent challenges that have little to do with golf and a lot to do with observation and the ability to control the ball, after figuring out where to send it. In fact often the player is not only called to make the hole, but also to find the best path to reach it, between platforms to be exploited with millimeter shots, ramps to avoid, elevators to be taken on the fly, buildings to climb, buttons to press, balconies. to climb, animals that steal the ball to avoid and many other amenities, which often make it a real undertaking to reach the end of the course in the pitches established for par. In any case, if you want, you can play without the maximum limit of shots, in a kind of narrative mode in which, if necessary, it is also possible to jump the holes that are putting us too much in difficulty.
Narrative side
To be honest, as a golf game, Golf Club Wasteland is not very successful. Indeed, it often becomes really frustrating, yet at some point it begins to exert an almost hypnotic charm on the player, who ends up getting carried away by his deep melancholy and crescendo. narrative really managed with great capacity. The involvement is so great that continuing to play golf becomes an excuse to continue following the story. Let's try to explain ourselves better.
The title of Demagog Studio combines three narrative techniques different. The first is the purely environmental one: we are playing golf on a completely ruined planet, where buildings and infrastructures, once the glory of our species, have become silent tombstones that act as a warning against the madness that has led those who have could afford it. From this point of view the developers have done a great job to make the game world decadent and desolate, creating a very strong natural contrast with the activity we are doing (playing golf, in case you missed it). If they had limited themselves to this gimmick, however, they would have made the experience quite poor, holding back on that small cynicism we were talking about above.
Here comes the second narrative idea: the protagonist listens to one all the time Martian radio, called Radio Nostalgia From Mars, which chronicles the life of humans on the red planet. The radio broadcasts, which are made up of interviews, music, government announcements, live testimonies, memories of the Earth and appeals to the population, make the atmosphere of the game even more impregnated, giving us the background of what happened and filling the paths of ghosts (metaphorically speaking), evoked by the voices of people millions of kilometers away. So let's listen to the words of the survivors and imagine we are playing among what were their homes, their workplaces, the places where they went on vacation. We listen to the propaganda of the power that controls Mars, which tries to hide the problems that oppress the colonies behind a grim rhetoric. We listen to the nostalgia of humans for a planet that no longer exists and on which they have left everything they held dear. Everyone has lost some affection, no one excluded. And we play golf.
Here comes the third narrative technique, which if we want is also the one that leads to the most surprising result. Small events happen during the holes, linked to a mysterious and unidentified narrator, which initially the game does not seem to give much weight.
Gradually, however, these become more and more frequent and begin to reveal the identity of our character, making him evolve and giving him strong motivations. At the beginning of the game it is inevitable to perceive it as a kind of embodiment of the cynicism of power. After all, who would not consider inhumane an individual who chooses to pay a lot of money to play a sport like golf on the spoils of his old world? Yet never as in this case are we faced with a smoke screen raised to distract us, which is thinned out hole after hole, revealing in the clumsy avatar that we are controlling a 'humanity waiting.
Slowly the three narratives merge with the story environmental and radio broadcasts that make up his story, whose threads are re-tied after the end of the game, with the unlocking of a diary in which images and words finally explain who the golfer is and why he is there.
Faced with the truth, everything we have seen and done takes on a different meaning, higher and deeper than the initial expectations created by the game itself. It is here that it becomes possible to re-read the sporting side of the title, with the holes that end up taking on a very different function from the one they have in other golf games: they must not challenge the player who scores the best score, but must slow him down in order to allow the story to flow naturally. Too simple holes would have prevented such an accurate environmental description and would have forced cuts in radio transmissions. By making them very intricate, the developers wanted to buy time, which is to make sure that the first game players did not rush towards the end and miss out on large chunks of what the game has to say. Sure it was a risky choice, but it can't be said that it didn't pay off in terms of overall experience.
Comment
Tested version PC Windows Digital Delivery Steam, PlayStation Store, Xbox Store, Nintendo eShop Price 9,99 € Resources4Gaming.com8.5
Readers (5)8.4
Your voteGolf Club Wasteland is a surprising work: taken as a game of golf, it leaves the time it finds and, indeed, it is really flyable. However, considered in its narrative dimension, it takes on a completely different value, manifesting an unexpected depth and an unthinkable capacity for involvement. Let's say that it is one of those experimental titles that only an independent developer can afford to make and that should be lived to be able to realize what they really are. The essence is that if you are looking for a good game of golf it is better to leave it alone, while if the narrative aspect intrigues you then playing it could find one of the most significant experiences of the year.
PRO
- Deep and engaging story told with great taste
- Stylistically excellent
- The golfing part only serves to slow down the action
