Good idea, but misses par.
The Bad: Odd ball physics; boring single player; too easy; limited options in course creator.
3D Ultra Mini Golf Adventures isn't a game that would normally interest me. In fact, I had no plans of ever playing it or even trying the demo until my nephew insisted that we try it. After purchasing the game, I discovered to my surprise that it is a fun game. But it’s limited in scope, and doesn’t last long.
GAMEPLAY
The gameplay for Ultra Mini Golf is simple. Maybe a little too simple. There are several different courses each of which has their own theme. Once you pick a course, you can then choose from one of four avatars; plus clothing and ball styles. There are also several different control styles, but the default "hold and release" is probably the best for most players.
Once you get into the game, you'll find that it can actually be a lot of fun with other players. The holes are all unique and have some great challenges to overcome, but they tend to be a little easy. One of the problems is that most of the holes have a short-cut which allow you to easily get a hole-in-one. This takes away some of the fun from the game, and lessens the skill required to make par. Plus the courses are designed so that if you miss a short-cut, you have make multiple shots just to recover from the miss. This usually will put you well over par.
The ball physics are also a little strange at times. The ball will often change directions even though there's no noticeable change in terrain. A lot of the courses have obstacles built into the course that will alter how you play. Things like lasers that fry your ball, and scorpions that push it out of the way are the norm. This makes the courses fun, and more unpredictable, but also makes the ball physics even more bizarre.
There are also various power-ups that give your ball special abilities. While they can be fun at first, their effectiveness isn’t that great and tends to cheapen the game. For example, you can get a power-up that lets your ball leave a trail of glue behind it. Any ball that runs into it will be stuck. So this means that a player that had a good shot, can have it taken away because of this. It would have been better if you could disable the power-ups.
GRAPHICS
Nothing to shout about here. The visuals are all pretty much average. The avatars aren't well animated, and look like they're taking mini golf way too seriously. The courses have a nice visual appearance to them, but the color palette is not very good. This leads to a lot of bland textures. The levels do have a lot of nice visual affects, and background animations. But there’s also a lot of clipping, and transparency issues.
SOUND
Again, nothing special here. There are no voice-overs for any of the avatars. The music fits the theme of the level, but gets very repetitive. There are some cool sound effects for each of the levels, but they have a tendency to repeat a lot. Like the visuals, the sound department is just average.
VALUE
There’s no real lasting value to this game. Sure, it’s fun to play multi-player, but only for a little while. Once you get the hang of the courses, it’s a breeze to get eagles or better. There’s also a map editor, which is a good idea, but you can only make the most basic of courses. You also can’t add any of the usual obstacles that you find in the regular courses. The achievements are way too easy, and most of them can be gotten in one sitting.
In the end, 3D Ultra Mini Golf Adventures is just a sub-par game for Live Arcade. Unless you’re a mini-golf addict, this game won’t hold your interest for long. It can be fun to play with friends, but the game is so short, I’d rather go play real mini-golf with my friends.