Here’s the most realistic golf game ever – It took me 428 strokes to finish the hole | games

I I’ve always struggled playing golf. I wish I hadn’t done that. It’s a beautiful game in concept. Take a leisurely walk in the sunshine, play ball around, and eat sandwiches and beer during and after playing. Sure, you have to dress like Huggy Bear from Starsky and Hutch, and getting an actual club membership is more complicated than joining the Freemasons (although many offer a two-for-one deal with this), but you don’t have to be fit, and you don’t even have to run. It’s the only outdoor sport where a fat dad can be the best in the world.

The premise couldn’t be simpler: Get the ball into the hole. But there is nothing worse in sports than knowing what you have to do and not being able to do it. Just ask amateur paratroopers.

This gap between what I want to do and my inability to do it is what makes me angry when I play. And you can’t play golf when you’re angry. The only times I’ve finished a round of golf in less than two rounds has been when the number refers to clubs I’ve picked up or thrown into lakes. And that’s exactly what made golf video games so beautiful. Because it was so easy, I was finally able to do what was beyond my reach on a real course. Most of my generation cut their Machi candy on the Mega Drive’s PGA Golf. It had the simplest controls imaginable. Press the button to start swinging. Press it again when the power bar reaches the point you need it, then press it a third time when it returns to what has always been a fairly forgiving sweet spot. You can only mess it up if you miscalculate the distance. Or the wind. Or you were playing near a threshing machine that cut your hand.

Within a day, you were flying out of PGA West and making easy tackles for eagles at TPC Sawgrass. Over time, more challenging control methods appeared in golf simulation games, where thumb pads were used to replicate the swing motion and, in one particularly painful case, the Wii’s motion sensor allowed you to replicate your physical swing, which put my back out of work one Christmas. Thank you, Tiger Woods! But even these control advances were pretty straightforward to master.

However, this always gave golf games limited replay value for me, because it was easier to collect more birdies than a discarded sandwich on a British beach. Now comes a golf game that actually takes you back to feeling like a fool on a real course, the perfectly named Normal Golf, which has a demo on Steam. It comes from Luke Muskats, creator of Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride, two of the most exhilarating, simple, and fast games I’ve ever spent time playing on a toilet.

But this is the opposite of a quick and fun game that is easy to learn. It was intentionally designed to be the hardest golf game ever. You have a ragdoll stickman drawing. You move your arms using the mouse, while a pair of switches adjust your stance and clubface angle. The concentration required is intense, because you have to look at two things at once: the golfer’s limbs to make sure you are making full contact with the ball and the club face moving in and out of the correct angle phase during the swing. You only get the perfect shot 10% of the time.

Just like real golf.

It’s harder than playing Golden Tee in a bar. Balanced. So why don’t I tear out bald spots out of frustration? Because this game makes a lot of sense in replicating game mechanics. It also helps that it’s funny, the script is great, and extra money is made by destroying signs, hitting hidden gongs, and landing the ball into giant toilets. These extra events can get annoying because you can literally experience the same shot for 20 minutes. At least in the normal course, a worse shot will still get the ball closer to the pin, so progress is made, albeit slowly. It took 428 strokes and nearly two hours to complete the demo, and there’s only one actual hole in it, along with the surreal and comedic challenges, but you’re encouraged to speed through it to your heart’s content afterward.

Applying this mechanic to an entire round of golf would be a perfect re-enactment of what the game is like for the average gambler, and this would be the greatest multiplayer golf game ever that a group of friends could play and compete against each other. I think that’s what kept me going: knowing that this was a smart attempt to do something different in golf and such attempts should be supported. And let’s face it, great art should always be difficult.

With this game and last year’s huge hit Baby Steps, we’re at the dawn of a new era of games that make controls ridiculously difficult in order to replicate real-life experiences. The future definitely includes soccer games where you can control players’ legs using two control pads, and platform games that can be played with a converted treadmill and someone standing there slapping you in the face for real while you play Tekken. Honestly, I wouldn’t go anywhere near Resident Evil.