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25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Refreshing and innovative, 6 Jun 2005
By A Customer
As a fan of other PC golf titles (not that there are many) I bought this one with little prior knowledge. I am glad I did. This is so different from any of its competitors since the focus here is on creating your own golf course. The tools that allow you to do this are very easy to pick up. Almost everything is done with the mouse. For example, press the space bar, draw a shape and then it asks what you want i.e. "Fairway", "Bunker", "Rough", "Lake", etc. Once you have drawn the shape you can then move it, change it (via "Control Points") and set the properties. So, in the case of a lake - you can set the colour of the lake, how reflective the water is and how murky it is.The editor is split into 3 sections - the first lets you draw the shapes for each hole. The second lets you set the relief of the terrain. This is done via a grid where each grid point can be moved up and down. There are tools to allow you to create smooth hills or sharp cliff faces or you can just "randomise" the entire grid. The third layer lets you fiddle with the environmental factors such as cloud cover, sky colour, sun colour, wind, rain, gravity, air pressure, etc. At any time during the creative-process you can "Test" or "Play" your work-in-progress. This allows you to walk around your golf holes and decide if you are completely happy with it. The game comes with more than 10 courses to play immediately out-of-the-box. One or two of these are stunning. My personal favourite is called "El Cortante". The attention to detail in this course is incredible. Not just from a graphical point of view but also from a golf point of view. Graphically, CustomPlay Golf has some really nice touches - when the sun goes behind the clouds, it gets darker and the shadows fade away. The trees blow in the wind and their shadows follow them. However, some parts of the game look a little dated - particularly the characters. Compared to other PC titles - these guys look a bit simple. There is one feature I have to mention and that's "PlayMail". This lets you e-mail a playable version of a hole that you create to anyone. I tested this by creating a silly little hole and then sending it to myself and I was impressed with what I got. A completely stand-alone game that allows you play the hole over and over again. I have only had the game for 3 days and I don't think I have seen everything it has to offer - I haven't tried any of the other online stuff yet. The game has a few problems but hopefully they will all be fixed in a patch. From what I have seen though, I can recommend this game to anyone who likes golf games, or likes the idea of creating their own golf course.
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