Golf Resort Tycoon

• Platform: IBM PC Compatible
• Release Date: May 10, 2001
• Genre: Simulation
• Style: Construction/Building Sim
• Similar Games: Transport Tycoon [Classic Series] (IBM PC Compatible), Pizza Tycoon (IBM PC Compatible), RollerCoaster Tycoon (IBM PC Compatible), Ski Resort Tycoon (IBM PC Compatible), Fast Food Tycoon (IBM PC Compatible)

Game Description

Golf Resort Tycoon allows you to design, build, develop and, with a little luck and skill, amass great virtual wealth from your personally owned and operated golf course and resort. Beginning with a relatively empty stretch of land, you manipulate elevations with terrain editing tools and sculpt the layout to reflect the links of your imagination. Greens, fairways, bunkers and water hazards can be added with ease, as the resort grows before your eyes from an isometric perspective.

The name of the game, though, is profit. Budgeting wisely is a necessity as you build a clubhouse and add potential moneymakers such as a swimming pool, tennis courts, health spa, hotels, restaurants, pro shops and gardens. You need to hire golf pros and groundskeepers, provide food and beverage stands, carts, restrooms, putting greens and a driving range to attract and keep paying customers.

A 3D perspective allows you to get up close and personal with resort guests as you observe their reactions to different features as you mold your dream resort. Scenarios with predetermined objectives and a freeform "sandbox" mode are offered as gameplay options to give you freedom of creation.

Roots & Influences

Golf Resort Tycoon simulates building and designing a golf course resort from the ground up. This title is similar in concept to other Activision Value games such as Ski Resort Tycoon and Fast Food Tycoon.

Review: Overall

Golf Resort Tycoon is fun and challenging, as are many offerings from Activision, but it is also an underdeveloped and unfulfilled promise, as one might expect from the "Value Publishing" division of any game company. The title joins the growing trend of titles bearing an excellent concept but sacrificing quality in the name of cost efficiency.

The premise is both simple and complex: develop a resort to please golfers and non-golfers alike. To that end, several tools are available to shape the rough area into a putter's paradise. Five terrain types include forest, autumn forest, desert, mountains and islands, all richly drawn with oceans, volcanoes and similar landscapes to provide lush backgrounds. The land can be shaped easily -- trees cut, land lowered or raised and new flora planted to spruce up the surroundings.

The land isn't the only graphical treat. Golfers are rendered in pleasing but tacky golf clothes and are nicely animated as they toss their clubs in disgust or pose in triumph after draining a tough shot. The little pros are difficult to please and express themselves with easy to understand emotion icons. Also, the buildings are well drawn and can be rotated in four directions for convenient placement.

After enjoying a bird's eye view of the course, you can look at it through the eyes of the golfers. The fly-by camera gives a new 3D perspective to the resort and this option is one of the few amenities developers Cat Daddy Games decided to include in this value title. Hole layout is easy, as well, and while novice players can jump right in, advanced players have fewer customization options available with which to work. Sand and water traps come in several shapes and sizes, none of which can be manipulated more than turning at right angles. The end results are holes with dull, uniform greens and hazards.

Since placing sand and water traps is an integral part to any golf game, special care should have been taken to making construction more fun. Instead, hazards become a pain to the gamer instead of the golfer. Each sand trap has a raised lip that often stops balls from going in, making sunken traps impossible. Worse, traps overlap the green or edge of the fairway rather than mold to the shape of the boundaries, leaving the holes looking shoddy.

Golf Resort Tycoon, in the spirit of RollerCoaster Tycoon, requires the upkeep of the grounds with a skilled staff. The groundskeepers constantly water or mow the holes but tend to follow each other around. Five keepers might be mowing the first hole while hole number three becomes overgrown with weeds. Unfortunately, there is no option to assign a keeper to a certain area.

The gopher exterminators are modeled after Bill Murray's character from Caddyshack, complete with fatigues, goofy hat and dynamite. Get used to hiring dozens of the camouflaged characters since gophers are constantly invading the course. The severity and frequency of the attacks changes the clever nod to a great movie to a game-destroying nuisance.

Golf Resort Tycoon offers a sandbox mode with no goals or time limits, allowing you to develop every technology in the game at your own pace. The challenges are fun but do not unlock more challenges or contribute to a storyline. In fact, challenges are not even marked as successfully finished on the list once completed. There is no great reward other than the act of creating the resort itself.

The sounds are well done as evidenced when duffers' cry in despair after slices and hooks. A solid swing elicits a sweet sounding hit and polite golf clap and the music is varied enough to avoid becoming a distraction. Each building has its own realistic sound, be it the maid from an upscale hotel or the rebounding echo of an intense game of racquetball.

Despite what Activision Value Publishing, Inc. would have you believe, value is not cost effectiveness over quality. Given a few more months of development, Golf Resort Tycoon could have become the satisfying experience promised by the hype on the box. As it stands, the game is worth briefly exploring, despite the small annoyances, but loses its luster when one begins to think of what it could (or should) have been.

Review: Enjoyment

The game is fun for a while until you get good enough to need more customization. Staff is incompetent at times and with no storyline, track of completed challenges or real world courses, the fun factor fades fairly quickly.

Review: Graphics

Viewing perspectives are fun from both high above and through the eyes of resort guests. Graphics are pleasant but not spectacular.

Review: Sound

The sweet sound of golf and the relaxing resort sounds are faithfully reproduced.

Review: Replay Value

After building a full course with all the buildings, there isn't much else to do. The environment choices aren't diverse enough to make courses especially unique in appearance. Challenges do not lead to more challenges or rewards.

Review: Documentation

In-game tutorial is helpful and there is minimal written documentation; there's not much direction needed, though, to understand the game.

Production Credits

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