Strings Attached

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday August 5, 2006

Jason Hill

Real World Golf

PS2, PC $129.95, $109.95 G ***

Just as in a real game of golf it's the small things that punish you, writes Jason Hill.

Sony's EyeToy successfully employed a digital camera to translate a player's movements onto virtual environments, but the Gametrak system uses a seemingly more primitive method - strings!

Surprisingly, the system offers far greater precision than EyeToy, converting your three-dimensional movements to on-screen actions with impressive accuracy.

Players will feel like a Muppet wearing the Gametrak gloves, which attach to a USB floor unit using thin retractable cords to measure hand movements. Fortunately, you soon forget about the apparatus once you hit the virtual greens.

The package includes an amusingly dinky plastic club, although you could grab a real seven iron as long as you have the necessary lounge-room space (and the inclination to damage something).

The Gametrak system ensures Real World Golf is the most realistic golf game controller available for the home. It can judge even the slightest difference in swing speed, and changing your stance or swing will result in hooks or slices. With practise, you can even spin the ball.

This weekend hacker found he could drive greater distances and with improved accuracy on Real World Golf compared to when swinging a real club. But as testimony to the Gametrak system's sophistication, much of my game still suffered from the same quirks that prompt the occasional profanity and lost ball when strolling around a local course.

The weakness of the package is the quality of the software simulation. The layouts of the five fictional courses are challenging enough, but the graphics and ball physics are unconvincing. Putting is particularly below par.

Tournaments and mini-games such as multi-player target-practice competitions are engaging enough, but we wish the developers had simply spent their time converting the control system so it would work with higher-quality golf simulations such as EA's Tiger Woods series.

Endgame: Any golfer will be able to pick up and play in seconds, and the sensation of playing real golf is astonishing. Pity the software simulation is so drab.

Big Brain Academy

Nintendo DS $49.95 G ***

Feel free to call me big head, fat head or thick head. In Big Brain Academy, you actually want the heftiest cranium possible.

In addition to their brain weight, players might also discover an aptitude for a new vocation, with Academy suggesting careers based on test results. I was told I was suited to banking, engineering, theatre production and detective work within the first hour alone.

Following the lead of Nintendo's recent (and very successful) Dr Kawashima's Brain Train, Academy offers 15 tricky tests to see if you make the grade against friends and family.

Tasks are divided into five categories: think, memorise, analyse, compute and identify. Apart from the inclusion of arithmetic, the fast-paced tests are very different in style and content to Brain Train, and include matching items, memorising, counting, drawing, logic puzzles and patterns.

In one challenge you are presented with several animals on weight scales and are required to work out which is the heaviest. In others, you need to recall a series of numbers and symbols quickly flashed on the top screen.

Players can choose the test mode to have their brain judged after playing a random selection of tasks from each category, or you can sharpen your skills by trying to win medals in the practice mode.

Academy is surprisingly good fun and gives your noggin a workout, but the appeal is short-lived. Brain Train wisely limits play to short bursts, but in Academy you can experience everything in just an hour or two, with little incentive to return.

Lasting appeal is limited to trying to outsmart your mates. Up to eight can play using a single cartridge thanks to the DS console's wireless game-sharing capabilities, and the competition quickly becomes fierce.

Endgame: Entertaining and competitive brain-teasers, but the compilation would be easier to recommend at a lower price.

© 2006 Sydney Morning Herald

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