PGA Tour 96! Blind Review.   

      Golf at it's best on the Sega.. Right ?  Maybe not. I was raised more on the SNES and the NES so my experience with Sega games is pretty limited. That being said the only other early golf based video games I played was all on the NES and nothing to really be stoked about unless you were into golf and gaming. But hey! We're talking 3-D graphics with "Blast Processing" So this can't go wrong, and after all. Sega does what Ninten' don't. 

      Jumping into the meat of the review now. As stated before my only experience with retro golf video games was on the NES so I was pleased with the graphics. They're sharp and refined compared to the NES Golf. The 3-D simulation was done well but that's only really appealing if you're interested in seeing the bunkers or the swing of the club. The pro golfers aren't really that great to look at either, but for the time I reckon they were done ok. I'm sure they weren't putting much effort in making the pros look like their real life counter parts either though. I'm not sure who most of these pros were anyway. The pics are well done on the cards for the pros though. As for the courses, they're done rather well. There is a nice distance illusion going on as you see the ball travel through the air and finally land (hopefully in the fairway). They obviously were counting on their "revolutionary" graphics quality over quantity. As there is only 3 courses to play. Not counting any that may or may not be unlocked as I didn't play through the tournament mode. I'll get to the reasons for that in a bit. I give graphics an 8 out of 10. As this was new for it's time. Also I think some of the attempts at showing depth and such failed. It looked bad with the triangles of shading or something on the greens. And because of the attempt at 3-D graphics you have to wait a few seconds between strokes, I'll touch on that some in the game play section.

      There isn't really much you can say about the sound. There is a nice little voice over of "E A Sports, It's in the game." in the intro. The music isn't bad, but it's not exactly anything to rave over either. While teeing off you'll notice that there is little to no sound at all. I reckon that's not so bad as it's supposed to be quiet. But this is a video game and some ambient low music would have been nice. Sometimes you hear a bird or a bug, which one I'm still unsure of. The sound of the impact of club to ball isn't bad though. The crowd sounds are alright I suppose, though they do sound rather generic. I'm being very generous in giving the sound a 5 out of 10. 

     Well there isn't much of a story unless you count using a created golfer to play a tournament. So I haven't included any sort of rating for that. So I will be focusing now on addictive game play. Which unless you're really into golf games is pretty non existent. I'm into some sports games yet I'm really not feeling it here. I give it a 3 out of 10.for being addictive. Mostly because the difficulty measures is a bit off. On amateur mode it's pretty straight forward and simple. On your stroke you just line up the moving bars with the green spaces trying to avoid the red. That being said, on Pro mode it's learning curve is very steep yet still manageable. The short game is difficult though. Especially on pro mode. The caddie is usually vague in my opinion as he usually says the putt is "straight in" Easier said than done, I say. I'd advise anyone going to practice your swing and putting through many games of stroke play instead of tournament mode. Game play? Over all I give the stroke play a 5 out of 10 in addictive game play.

     Depth? .. I've stepped in mud puddles with more depth than this game. All joking aside, you have two modes to play in. Stroke play and Tournament mode. As I've said before go with stroke play, you'll enjoy it more. And muligans rock! I give the depth 3 out of 10 as there could at least of been something like a driving range put into the game to practice swings, or a putting practice range. But maybe I'm asking for too much for an early game. I touched on the difficulty before so I won't be able to talk much about that without sounding like a broken record. I give the difficulty a 7 out of 10.

     In closing I'll reflect more on how I felt playing the game. I had a lot of fun in stroke play practicing my game. I was even confident after being able to play through with out having to use many mulligans. But that was a mistake. Being on the green in two on a par 5, I was hunting a birdie. What I caught was a double bogey. I would like to try this out in two player mode though as I could imagine there'd be a lot of fun in this game with a friend. The game doesn't hold water when it comes to single player goodness though. With all that being said and done, this is also my first review for a game so I hope you enjoyed this review and let me know what you think.