Hot shots returns with a solid but no so innovative installation!
However while there isnt much new there are 2 pretty important things. 1st being my favorite and that is the online play. While i've only played 1 tourney and 1 strokes game online i have to say that the overall experience is enjoyable. There isn't much lag, which i know is a great relief to anyone. With stats being permanent, no one wants to deal with the power setup thingy skipping half the bar when u are staring down a 150 yrd chip to the whole, between two bunkers and a 7mph wind directly west. One fun but more of less just a aesthetic aspect is the avatar lobby. You can design little ppl to communicate with others and hang out in the "club house", and these little guys can be dressed in bunch of other stuff you win in the single player mode. Not sure though if the players can award items for official tourneys, but if not, that should definitely be a patch in near future! All in all there are plenty of way to play, casual and serious and so far there is actualy enough players to keep the waiting down to minimum!
Second new thing is the advanced shot system. It is very similar to already years in use system from TW golf series, and it offers some advantages to those that wish to go thru hours of practice! Also almost all of the single player brackets offer at least one "advanced shot only" event so if u really wanna get a shot at maximum number of prizes you might wanna master it! To me i did not find it all that important but i guess if you are very serious about the competitve online part of the game it could give you an edge.
As for the usual stuff in the game, there are overall 6 courses with numerous layouts and a lot of different approaches. You will play with a giant cup, strong wind, shuffle holes, only female players and so on! There are also 18 characters offered on the main screen and they as usual are "characters" and also offer a variety of play style. On a side note, i am not sure if it is somewhat of a japanese trend to spastic out of your mind, but some of the available players are borderline terribly spastic or have some unusual "love life" tendencies" (read: Bjorn, Suzuki, Sophia, etc)
Graphically game is very easy on the eye with some minor grainy areas but which wont bother you unless you are one of the people that drive the camera to the weirdest nooks on the course to see if everything was scripted perfectly. Menu is easy to navigate with all of the options so blatanly displayed that a blind man would see them. As always there is the profile section with you stats and of course most importantly the video clips of your best shots. Game offers auto-save as well, in case you get too excited and forget to hit L1 (or R1, i forgot already), to save your best/worst shots!
Other than that pretty much everything else is there that a regular HSG fan would expect. So overall i have to say that it is a solid game with a long awaited online play (at least by me), and while it doesnt offer a whole lot of new things should keep anyone in with a taste for golf or just a good party game playing for hours!