True Swing Golf review

Lackluster golf games are like skateboarding on a ping pong table: there's not much to do, and the minute you start enjoying yourself, the fun quickly ends. True Swing Golf is like that. The DS touch screen is a good interface for lining up tee shots and whacking the dimples off the ball - you just touch your club with the stylus, pull back, and whip it forward. You can even add spin, or use draws and fades to make your shots curve.

Something about it just doesn't work, though - or, more accurately, works too well. Maybe we're expecting too much finesse from a 256x192 screen, but it's not actually cool that you can play with your eyes closed and still easily sink 30-foot putts and blast long tee shots like Tiger Woods on his best day. And, although 15 courses is a respectable selection, it's pretty sad when the top, 3D screen looks like a PSone game (at best) and the lower, 2D screen is even more dated. Yuck and yuckmore.

It's also too bad the game modes are so slim; it's just stroke and match play, plus a short championship mode, and that's it. There are no real pro golfers to pick from. You just choose some smiling, generic character and choose either the "cool" or "wild" attitude (which mostly affects how you react to your shots) and then hit the links. We're not totally dependent on having a high-paid, smiling athlete on the box to make us like a game, but a little more personality could have gone a long way. Just look at Sony's Hot Shots Golf and of course Nintendo's own Mario Golf series.

So, no mini games, no best ball tourneys. When you decide to set up a championship match do you get to accumulate some cash and buy a few lame customizations (shirts and clubs that bump your abilities, and so on), but it's too little, too late.

Multiplayer modes are similarly stripped down. You can challenge up to three nearby friends to a wireless match even if you're the only one who actually owns the game. You can send a friend a demo wirelessly. However, actual online support is nowhere to be found.