Super Swing Golf

Pangya is all about making your character your own, and the actual game of golf itself becomes almost secondary - essentially, playing the courses becomes little more than a way to earn in-game currency, which can be used to pay off caddies or buy some of the more mundane items. Super Swing Golf, by contrast, strips away all of the online aspects and most of the character customization, leaving us with what would be a really very normal golf game were it not for the extreme silliness of the setting - and, of course, its as-yet-unique control system. You have to swing like a golfer (albeit a rather slow one), with a consistent and even swing at a 45 degree angle, in order to hit a perfect shot; it takes quite some getting used to, but impatient killjoys can always switch to button control. Birdies, decent shots and risky chip-ins are rewarded with Pang Points, which are used to buy stat-boosting equipment in the shop, which enjoys a constant influx of new items - but unlike in PC Pangya, the only way to test out your souped-up character is against the AI, which is considerably less rewarding to beat than another human player.

The single-player modes consist of Pangya Festa, which is an enjoyably nonsensical story mode, and straightforward Match and Stroke against the AI. Demonstrably, this lacks imagination, but the setting amply makes up for it. The courses are pleasingly varied, littered with obstacles from windmill blades to ice floes and cannons to strategically-placed signs designed to mess up particularly risky shots. These courses have been played thousands of times online, and consequently they are extraordinarily well-tailored to the player, full of clever shortcuts and get-arounds that reward risks with super-long runs, advantageous lies and, of course, the all-important Pang Points. Super Swing Golf’s courses are easily its highlight, but equally, they are to some extent designed for showing off - in single-player, there are no real competitors or ostentatious players to goad you into taking that enormously risky shot, and there’s no taunting or heckling to prevent you from playing over-conservatively.

Despite the quality of the courses, though, playing Pangya in single-player quickly becomes a grind. The characters and their respective stories are completely baffling, and there is altogether little incentive to succeed, as the only rewards are some more unlockable baffling characters, which thanks to the equipment system are not inherently any better or worse than each other, and more clothing to buy in the shop, which equally begins to feel pointless very quickly. Rope a friend in, and watch them struggle to get ahold of the swing system whilst annoying them by scribbling on the screen or waving about to make their controller vibrate in the Balloon Pop multiplayer mode, and things start to look a little brighter - but sadly, it’s not enough of a novelty to hold much appeal beyond the first two or three rounds.