First Impressions With Turbo Golf Racing
Racing games are neat. Golf is possibly the most versatile sport in the context of video games. Rocket League is the perfect fusion of High-Speed Car driving and soccer. Why not make a fusion of racing and golf to capitalize on that? Well, that’s exactly what Turbo Golf Racing does in the Xbox Game Pass Preview game. And I dare say that it does it pretty well. So rev up your engines, and get ready to hit the greens. It's time to go.
The main reason I brought up that Turbo Golf Racing is a Preview game is that it’s straight up an Early Access game. While there is a decent foundation here to work with, the offerings and what you can do are pretty limited. There’s the tutorial, single-player courses of increasing difficulty, multiplayer races, and some light car customization. That’s pretty much it so far. It’s not something that I can get too bent out of shape over because there’s sure to be stuff that is gonna be added later. Early Access is as Early Access does, I always say.
But back to the game itself: Turbo Golf Racing is on the surface, a pretty standard-looking riff on the sports and racing mashup introduced by Rocket League back in the summer of 2015 (good lord, it’s been 7 years since that game came out). You got the small car that you can customize, you got a variety of tracks and an assortment of powerups to help you get the ball into the hole much easier. The main differences are in the executions of these ideas that I brought up. The main thing I’m talking about is the fact that golf is the most versatile sport in video games. What I mean by this is that there have been so many riffs on the basic gameplay of golf over the years and all of them have been super novel. You got simulator-type games like the PGA Tour games from back in the day and the more arcade-y Mario Golf games that Nintendo has been putting out since the ’90s. Hell, you even have more recent party golf games like Golf With your Friends, which are less golf and more an excuse for you and your friends to revel in the sheer chaos of the whole experience, and even full-fledged RPGs like the Mario Golf games by Camelot.
What I’m saying is that there are a lot of ways to interpret golf in games. Turbo Golf Racing does this by mixing the goal of golf, which is to score with as few swings as possible, with a standard racing game. This comes off as an interesting concept because of how well it can go most of the time. It’s the first time I’ve seen this concept done and it pulls it off well. This is because the driving in the game feels really good. You can drift with the emergency brake to pull off sick drifts, boost to keep the momentum going (this is a race still), and even jump and air dash. That’s right, you can straight-up air dash in this game and it rules. There's also the gliding mechanics I gotta go over. When you get into midair scenarios for extended periods or just for a quick jump, you can activate your vehicle's glider function. This is an interesting twist because it allows for some interesting course designs to shine through, which is exactly the case.
The main ways to play are also the single-player courses and the online lobbies. The former is a good way to acclimate to the way the game is designed. The latter is good for kicking nerds in the teeth. I've played both in equal measures and I can tell you that this feels like the wildest, most feast or famine type experience outside of MOBAs. What I mean by that is that there are times that it can pendulum swing between you completely crushing people to getting crushed. As someone who prefers there to be more competitive experiences in games as opposed to this, I was a bit let down by the matchmaking in this regard. But it's early access, so it could get better. Single-player, on the other hand, is a decent amount of fun. The timings on some of the course clearing requirements are a bit on the strict side, but doable. They're fun.
While the main pieces are in place for an exceptional game, it's not without its downsides. The courses while excellent, have a habit of creating large empty pockets of space. This causes you to lose time on the race. But that may well be a skill issue in my case. Another I've noticed is that while the game gives you the option for powerups and augmentations that help you through the races, these feel like they don't give you enough of a chance to justify using them. Again, those could just be personal issues I have instead of design problems, just thought they were worth pointing out.
At this point, Turbo Golf Racing has all of the pieces in place to be a great night for friends, the few issues it has are noticeable. But if that doesn't dissuade you, give it a try. It's a good time.
