100ft Robot Golf Review

Sometimes, it’s all in the name. Snakes on a Plane, Lesbian Vampire Killers and Tongue of the Fatman all got some publicity for their bizarre names. Granted, they were all pretty awful, but then we had Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars, which became Rocket League, so a convoluted name doesn’t have to be the death knell. How does 100ft Robot Golf fare as a game with an equally bizarre moniker?

The game pretty much tells you what is going to happen from the outset. You play as a 100-foot robot in a game of golf. It’s a very simple premise, but one that is so bizarre that I just couldn’t help but be intrigued. I asked our editor if I could review this game from the very first trailer so it goes without saying that I was really excited by the game. That’s why I’m sad to say that my expectations fell quicker than a footballer who thinks they might get a penalty. 

The concept is brilliant; who doesn’t want to play as a gigantic robot? The addition of sports to the mix is an amusing twist, and it worked brilliantly for the aforementioned Rocket League by adding football into the mix, so you’d hope that it would work here too. However, where Rocket League mixes high speed cars with a fast and furious game like Football, 100ft Robot Golf mixes in a more sedate sport.

The rules of the sport are only followed very loosely. The very first level talks about pars, but you realise quickly that there’s no such thing as par in this game anyway. Unlike real golf, where players try to complete the hole in as few shots as possible, this is just a race to get the ball into the hole before your opponents. Now, with a game like this, you’re not expecting realism, so that’s not the worst thing to happen, but the problem is that the game doesn’t go all the way with abandoning realistic golf mechanics and sits somewhere in the middle of simulation and parody.

There are various robots, all of them with their own available customisations that can be unlocked throughout the game, and many of them with slightly different swing mechanics, so choosing your robot also chooses your playstyle. The matches invariably see the destructible environments being smashed or shot down, but only the environments. For whatever reason, you can’t shoot your opponents: a design choice that astounds me for a mech game. You can knock them backwards a little bit if they get too close as you take a shot but that’s about it.

It’s definitely a nicely presented game, with anime style cutscenes throughout the story mode explaining what happens. It’s incredibly over the top, as if trying to parody some of Japan’s more esoteric anime shows, and it nearly manages to pull it off, but the joke of “oh look, it’s very cheesy, lol” starts to wear thin after a while. Especially when you remember that this is supposed to be a game, not a show on Adult Swim.

Graphically, the game is nice and colourful, but it’s all a bit flat. There’s very little shading and everything looks a bit chunky and lacks flourish. It’s a PS4 exclusive but it looks like it could have been made on the PS2. Fortunately, the dreadful camera will mean that you don’t have to spend too much time looking at what’s going on anyway, as it focuses on a random bit of scenery nearby like a rabid botanist instead of actually focusing on what the fuck is going on in the game.

As you play, there are two terribly voiced commentators as well. I’ve never been a fan of commentary in sports games in general and I tend to turn it off in most games, but in this one, it really does need turning off. The dreadful jokes that they tell will repeat ad nauseum and they don’t get any funnier, but you keep hearing them again and again. It’s like being stuck in a lift with two dads and a box of Christmas crackers, but without the small mercy of plastic toys to keep you amused.

If you’re looking for a good golf simulator, then there’s plenty out there. EA’s offerings are always fun, and there’s Blacklight Interactive’s Golf With Friends if you want something a bit more crazy. If you want a good mech game there are literally thousands of them. Titanfall 2 just came out for heaven’s sake. There’s just nothing that I can find to recommend 100ft Robot Golf when there are countless better games out there and that’s sad as I wanted to like it. This is a mechanical mess that a whole crate of WD40 won’t fix.