Welcome to our review of Mario Golf: Super Rush, a long-overdue new entry in the Mario Golf series!
Experience golf with a Mushroom Kingdom twist in the Mario Golf: Super Rush game. Play with up to four players locally or online and golf with Super Mario series characters like Mario, Peach, Yoshi, and more.
New players and seasoned pros alike can drive and putt to their hearts’ content, thanks to simple motion and button controls. The new shot gauge helps you handle slopes, and it’s easy to pull off spin, curve shots, and more. Test your skills in Standard Golf mode and take on six different courses, each with 18 holes (or fewer, if you want a quicker game).
If you’re up for something a bit more chaotic, Speed Golf and Battle Golf are multiplayer-focused modes that ratchet up the competition. And finally, Golf Adventure takes your Mii character on a golfing journey with high stakes and fearsome bosses. Just be on the lookout for that troublesome twosome, Wario and Waluigi!
Pick up the pace in Speed Golf and Battle Golf modes
Mayhem is par for the course in Speed Golf, where you and up to three other players* can compete at the same time. As you race through the course to get your ball in first, you can hinder your opponents with dashes and Special Shots. For example, Yoshi can dash atop a giant egg and King Bob-omb can pelt the green with explosions.
In Battle Golf, enter the neon-soaked Super Golf Stadium which has nine open holes—first player to get 3 flags wins. Use obstacles like Thwomps, Chain Chomps, and banana peels to your advantage as you hustle along. Up to four players* can join the fun in this mode.
Rise through the ranks in Golf Adventure
Start your Golf Adventure as a rookie at Bonny Greens, birthplace of the sport in the Mushroom Kingdom. You’ll meet new coaches, master new skills, battle fearsome bosses, and hunt for buried treasure on your quest to turn pro. Things get kind of weird when Wario shows up, but honestly…would you expect any less?
I love Golf games on console and am probably one of the few that really enjoys games like the Hot shots series and this very Mario Golf franchise. I love it when they are not overly realistic and Mario obviously fits the bill perfectly. But there is something very wrong with this game, very wrong. You need to start playing it the wrong way to get really good at it.
The best tutorial for this game is actually in what I find to be the worst part of the game.
First off, this is not a complaint, but I just could not find the battle golf interesting enough to keep me trying to play it. I just went back every time to regular golf and was truly enjoying the basic golf, its courses and I could not really be bothered to go to the battle game. Sure, I can see how some people would find it fun to play. The multiplayer options are without end and I can see many parties becoming laughing fests or even resulting in true life stand-offs thanks to the way this game can be both fun and frustrating.
My biggest frustration with this part came during the tutorial, which I promise is the best thing this entire game has but more on that soon! I had already played quite a bit of regular golf at that time and was even hitting under par on several courses already. Purely out of gut feeling on how to play and with past experience of many other golf games. They are not rocket science, well not most of the time.
But that tutorial is by far the best tutorial I played in any golf game and it really refined my gameplay so much, I was suddenly hitting on average at least 2 or 3 strokes lower on entire courses. But this is also where my frustration comes from, it is basically hidden in the “second part of the game”. I honestly feel this should have been a mandatory start to the game, skippable of course, but they should have started the game with it for real.
Now, the main game is obviously basic golf and it is just about as fun as you’d expect. Having played the game in handheld mode and TV mode, but not with motion controls (I blame my injured elbow right now), I have to say it is exactly what you’d expect from a golf game. It is fun, slow-paced and yet, you can easily get addicted or frustrated when you keep missing that easy pot. Thankfully they introduced the easy chip-in, which I really was grateful for, having had too many easy chip-ins on other games that I missed because of my lack of concentration.
For the main game, you can also say that if you played one golf game, you played them all. Despite its very good polish, in the end, it is a golf game and while that REALLY is no complaint, there is very little you can do to change a game like this.
Nintendo tried by introducing the second part of the game, Battle Golf. But for me personally, it did nothing special. I found it quite useless and yes, I did try to go far into the career of my newly created Mii. I just could not figure out how a game that gets the most out of its relaxing nature would actually be benefitting from a high-paced running in between strokes battle. One with coins, power-ups, ….
Now, I should be clear, not because I did not like it, that my word is holy and that you should not buy this game. On the contrary, I think the main game alone is strong enough as a title to warrant the purchase of this game. This is a really decent Golf game and I want to be perfectly clear about that. I just would have rearranged things like making that tutorial of the battle game mandatory and then… Then you would have gotten a much higher value out of your money. At least in my humble opinion really…
In conclusion, despite a very strong main game, the new addition of Battle Golf could not do the trick for me. I do recommend it to any Mario or Golf game fans!
