Ramblings from the Marginalized

Fun! Fun! Minigolf is a WiiWare game that allows you (and up to three friends) to play minigolf on your Wii. There are three different courses of nine holes each. Each course is more difficult than the previous one. A total of 27 holes exist in the game.

Players can either share one Wii Remote or each player can use their own. There is no permanent scoring system (such as Wii Sports has) though you can earn a coin rating at the end of each course.

There are four characters that you can pick from but none of them has any effect on the game. One character is as good as another except that some of them are a little goofier than others.

Basics

Like most golf games on the Wii you hold the Wii remote as you would a golf club with the front pointing towards the floor. A ghost image of where the ball will travel appears on screen as well as a picture of a golf ball with a moving white dot that indicates where you will hit the ball. Get your timing right and you can make a perfect shot. Make a mistake and the ball will curve off to the side, potentially ruining your shot.

The control pad is used for aiming the ball prior to taking your shot. You can also zoom in and out by using the up and down directions.

The amount of force you use when swinging the Wii Remote will correspond to how hard the ball is hit. Unlike traditional "play it where it lies" minigolf Fun! Fun! Minigolf has a very peculiar out of bounds rule that I will cover later in this review.

You can take a maximum of six strokes on a hole before you are declared to have failed the hole and move on to the next. When playing in multi-player mode you complete all of your strokes before the next player tees off.

Difficulty Levels

The game includes three difficulty levels: Easy, Medium and Hard. Each level is its own nine hole course.

The easy level is just that, easy. Don't be surprised if you land yourself some hole-in-one scores right from the first hole. In fact there are some holes where the only way you can not score a hole-in-one is if your ball goes out of bounds.

The medium level ratchets the difficulty up a few notches. There are some easy holes mixed in but there are also a few holes that will just piss you off with their difficulty. A difficulty that is all the more frustrating due to the game's out of bounds rules.

If you are feeling like a bit of a masochist go ahead and play the hard course. Yes, there are some easy ones thrown in but most of the holes are fiendishly difficult. Add in the stroke limit per hole and you may find yourself believing that some holes are impossible! If the game allowed you to practice a hole without counting strokes you might have an easier time figuring them out. Instead you just get angry.

Out Of bounds

Each hole has a white-lined area near the hole. Anything outside of this area is considered to be out of bounds. What this means in game terms is that most holes beyond the easy level are either a hole-in-one or a fail.

You read that right and I'm not exaggerating.

Picture if you will a hole with several 90 degree corners that you must bounce the ball through before getting to the hole. Now imagine the ball only making it halfway. In a normal game of minigolf you would play the ball from the middle of the course and try to make it all the way to the hole. In Fun! Fun! Minigolf that ball is out of bounds and you have to shoot from the tee again.

I don't know why they added this rule to the game but it takes the "Fun" out of the game.

I have had too many times where on the third stroke I finally got the ball past the obstacles only to have it bounce out of the white-lined area around the hole and marked as out of bounds. Back to the tee for me!

Conclusion

I hesitate to call this game a golf game. The easy level plays sort of like a golf game but in reality this is more of a puzzle game. There really is only one way to hit the ball on each hole, anything else will likely result in the ball being out of bounds requiring you to hit from the tee again.

The game can be fun in a group but if any of your friends (or kids) are easily frustrated you might want to avoid this one. At 900 Wii Points ($9) I consider the game to be a little bit over priced. With no customizations or score tracking I find the game lacking in long term play value. Once you've solved each hole there is almost no reason to play it again. Even in a group you know that the best player will end up going first and the others will just copy their shots.

If the out of bounds rules could be turned off the game would truly deserve the double fun in the title. I feel the game should be named for what it is: Fun! Firk! Arghhh!!!! Minigolf Puzzles.

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