Mario Golf: Super Rush (2021)

Started this last night, multiplayer with the Mrs. Had a great time. Easy to play, trickier to master. One round in and she's already downed a couple of eagles bouncing them off the pole!

I think I can see why playing single player would be a drag. The environments are a bit bland (not that we've seen them all yet). The course soundtrack I may have to turn off too. It's probably a bit simple and dull on your own.

Will report back when we've unlocked and played all the courses!

EVEN MORE Pre-release rant incoming:

Another thing that's really concerning is we still don't know the full depth of the game's controls, especially if "manual mode" swing is in!!! Previous entries have a three-click swing option where you Press A to start your swing, press A to set your power, and then press A to try to time your swing for accuracy. Later Mario Golf entries introduced an easy mode option where you only need to set power, and then the accuracy will be up to RNG but will always be in the sweet spot range.

The reason manual swing is important in Mario Golf is that it reduce RNG factors. Plus it has a risk / reward factor. Characters with massive drive distance like Bowser have a much smaller sweet spot, meaning the accuracy window timing is much tighter. It also means that if you're hitting a ball from a rough, sometimes you might want to yolo swing with a Wood driver club. You might have a great payoff with great accuracy timing, but mess that up and you'll much more easily duff shot and hit your ball to even more undesired areas.

... And that's a big issue from all footage I've seen from Mario Golf: Super Rush up to the E3 Treehouse Segment. There's only button presses to start swing and set power, and there's no accuracy check. None of the treehouse staff acknowledges that the "manual swing" exists. Our only saving grace is maybe this is an advance settings where you have to toggle it within an extra menu similar to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, but it's still a joke that we're STILL ambigious if this is there or not! Even World Tour early on confirmed the manual swing in the interface.

If the accuracy swing check ends up being 100% gone, I'm sorry but this automatically means that Mario Golf: Super Rush will objectively be the worst Mario "GOLF" game even beneath the first entry Mario Golf 64 because you pretty much took a major amount of skill out from the game from a pure golf perspective. Pretty much you'll end up nerfing the entire skill-based fundamentals of the game (even for an arcade golf title), which is what I value highly.

NOTE: This is different from me outright saying this will be a bad game period, because hey the RPG mode might be cool, and Speed golf might actually be fun in its own way as a wacky "Mario" title.

Pre-release rant incoming:

As someone who really loved playing Camelot's Mario Golf games, I currently am hesitant with this entry even after seeing the E3 trailer. All of the trailers seem like they're pushing more with the gimmicky side modes like Speed Golf, battle golf, and even that New Donk City mini-course, instead of actually enhancing normal stroke play.

This game also seems to have the fewest number of holes. We seem to only have six 18H courses (on par with Mario Golf 64) with the basic environment being re-used twice when Toadstool Tour had eight and World Tour had nine 18H and seven 9H. Even the non-Mario We Love Golf has ten 18H courses! It's also weird seeing we don't have a Tropical themed course unlike literally every other golf game, and instead we get a depressing-looking rainy forest.

Not to mention, Super Rush's courses are going to be bland. It's already visually basic with the semi-realistic graphics push, especially if you compare the art styles with Mario Golf: World Tour which is colorful and vibrant. Even though people are excited about Speed Golf... I actually view it more as a negative in that this mode will limit the entire game's level design. Course will HAVE to be wide and open to compensate for the fact 4-players will be sprinting on it. Not to mention you can't have any unique terrain like Cliffs and Island Chains if you have to be able to sprint each course from start to end.

I'm sure the game will be fun for the casual audience or people who are buying this as their first golf game, but I just don't really see how they're fleshing out the core stroke-play golf experience for veterans. I see this game being a hit just because of the marketing and the size Switch audience, and I suspect I'll be among the small vocal minority against this game because I have played the rest.

...Then again I've always stuck to playing Simple Mode in recent Mario Tennis games too.

Still will give the game a shot on release date... Maybe my mind will change after playing it, and maybe we'll see some new cool DLC updates.