Hot Shots Golf: World Invitational

As you drive for the first time, you’ll notice that the 1-wood has its impact zone tightened up such that any non-perfect hit will sharply slice or hook.¹ Beginner characters used to trade out power and control for easier impact zones, whereas here the expert characters linearly improve on the starting roster without a relative debuff to impact. A small change here instantly changes the candor of every non-par-three hole that comes after it, cutting off the wiggle room that gives this series its slow, novice-friendly beginnings. World Invitational goes out of its way to raise the skill floor rather than kowtow to newcomers; it’s a lean campaign attached to a ruthless online multiplayer scene rather than a starter entry as the previous PSP titles were. Wind is only communicated through a direction and a visual of your character dropping grass cuttings until you reach the green, where the actual speed finally appears only once it’s irrelevant to the simplified physics simulation. Progression demands first place finishes rather than aggregating placement scores across multiple tournaments as in the PS2 titles. The pocket-dimension courses feature hot air balloons blocking your path, quicksand sinkholes, and holes nestled into the sides of cliffs that no mower could ever reach. As the effective finale of the series before the infrequent reboots afterwards, it goes all-in on the core of the experience without wasting time on pleasantries.

The aggression has its perks: World Invitational pushes the nuances of its course design harder than the majority of its series, especially in the last course: Legacy of Golf Links. Although traditional links courses are generally treeless and expose their challenge in rolling terrain and deep pit bunkers, Legacy opts instead to honor the sea cliffs of Ireland, playing with extreme verticality and ravines in the middle of tight, winding fairways. When the fairways can’t stay contiguous, the designers break them out into multiple paths, emphasizing equally hazardous conditions between them. For example, on the par-four hole 12, the player can either drive into a long, wavering stair-step that adds extra crook to the hole at a length dangerously close to a par five, or they can place themselves closer to the hole on the left side, tucking themselves behind a gigantic rock obstruction that necessitates a hook around it. The greens get just as much love: on hole 11, a par three, the green slopes down steeply into a sheer rock face, with little margin for error if one wishes to putt up into the hole. If one is fine putting down, where slightly too much power will surely send the ball to the cliff’s edge, they must contend with a large bunker cradling the green from behind, leaving no flat place to drop the ball from the initial tee-off. These tricks and more – a par three on a shelf hundreds of feet above the tee, greens on islands separated from the fairway, high fairways shooting down onto low greens sheltered by stone arch obstructions – let Clap Hanz reach deep into their bag hole-to-hole rather than saving their best material for closing par fives on other courses.

The advanced shot from the previous entry, Out of Bounds, returns, reorienting the player’s timing checks towards the character’s animations rather than a traditional gauge. Unlike its predecessor, there’s no power bonus that comes from using one shot versus the other (or against the other hybrid shot types that exist). [src]

Given the enthusiast focus, the campaign should naturally throw new curveballs to long-time series fans. Indeed, an endgame “Real Golf” challenge strips away the movable camera, wind direction visualization, and additional lie information to leave you to judge each hole with your eyes alone (and the bird’s eye view on the map, if you prefer). Unfortunately, the rest of the endgame sputters out after Legacy is introduced. Instead of stacking earlier limitations, such as no spin and rainy conditions, they pull out the usual shot clock restrictions and stroke penalties on bunkers and rough (the latter of which is admittedly rather hardcore). Ideas like shuffling the holes and giving each an “impossible pin” point to what could have been done, but the game unceremoniously ends before they stretch any further than “nine holes with one restriction.” The crown challenge system attempts to alleviate this: an optional condition exists for each challenge, and fulfilling it rewards a crown token towards a difficult match play bout with one of the characters, which will add an alternate costume to the shop upon victory. It’s a nice gesture, but they’re unable to alter the actual hole sequence, weather, or player toolkit at all, and more importantly, they’re completely hidden (although still attainable) until credits roll. The addition feels like justification to continue playing into the post-game rather than a meaningful extension upon the base mechanics.