WHAT THE GOLF?

Good games with comedically uncooperative controls follow one of two examples: QWOP, in which failure is more entertaining than success, or Octodad, in which mundane tasks are simply more difficult than normal, but not actually difficult. WHAT THE GOLF? – a golf game in which the ball is anything other than a golf ball – does not follow these examples. One half of it is a rapid-fire stream of surprising nonsense, and the other half is a laboured trickle of tiresome nonsense. One of these halves is a barrage of creativity featuring clever genre subversions and mechanics that could be expanded to a game three times this size. The other half frustrates me with inconsistent physics and aggressive stroke limits, eroding my enjoyment of the humour and audio as well. Unsurprisingly, the experience is vastly improved in multiplayer, where players are only competing against each other and unpredictability is a virtue. Since most of the content is single-player, though, that’s not quite enough for a recommendation.