Links 2001

• Platform: IBM PC Compatible
• Release Date: November 08, 2000
• Genre: Sports
• Style: Golf
• Similar Games: PGA Tour Pro (IBM PC Compatible), Golf Pro 99 (IBM PC Compatible), Pebble Beach Golf (IBM PC Compatible)

Game Description

Touted by the designers as the most significant upgrade to the long-standing Links series in more than a decade, Links 2001, published by Microsoft, brings new features and enhancements to the best-selling (according to sales records) golf simulation on the market.

The inclusion of the Arnold Palmer Course Designer brings the Links franchise into the 21st century on par with other golf simulations available at the time of its release, such as PGA Championship 2000, by allowing users to design and exchange courses via the Internet without paying add-on course fees. The designer is the same editing software used to create many of the courses featured in the retail version of the game.

The courses featured in Links 2001 are designed using aerial survey data and greens with more than 500 GPS readings per green, accurate to the nearest centimeter. Links 2001 ships with five real world courses and one fantasy layout, Mesa Roja (carved from the red rock and desert environment of the southwestern United States).

Other courses include Scotland's St. Andrews Links Old Course; Arnold Palmer's design of Aviara in Carlsbad, CA; Westfields in Virginia; Canada's Chateau Whistler from the foothills of the Canadian Rockies; and Hawaii's Princeville.

In addition to the course designer, other enhancements include ambient flying birds and billowing tee-flags, support up to a 1280x1024 resolution, optional 3D acceleration, a new graphics rendering engine, 14 new golfer animations (both left and right handed), moveable swing gauge, interactive lessons, and multiplayer online improvements. A few features inherent to earlier editions of the game, such as the ability to change shirt colors and the left- and right-distance aiming marker, have been removed.

Adding to the stable of world class golfers you can play as or against are Sweden's Annika Sörenstam and Spain's Sergio Garcia. Each golfer, along with Arnold Palmer, reflects accurate personalized styles, mannerisms, and speech. The option to customize club distances is also available for newly created golfers, either human or computer.

As well as offering a Mode of Play (MOP) designer, Links 2001 contains 46 pre-designed MOPs, ranging from team configurations with specialized rules to solo play. Other features include the Ready Play option in multiplayer, designed to speed up Internet play, three possible swing styles (classic 2- or 3-click), PowerStroke or easy, slope, wind and lie indicators, adjustable "gimmes" and mulligans and hotkey support.

Player creation allows you to adjust and select various features such as appearance, clubs, club distances, left or right handedness, skill levels, tee boxes, swing types and more. Shots can be shaped using draw or hook and fade or slice options, and a variety of shot choices such as flop shots and chip shots are available on a pop-up menu during gameplay.

The Arnold Palmer Course Designer contains an extensive library of 2D and 3D objects including people, pins and tees, a checklist for help in designing, multiple view angles, a plethora of terrain and environmental choices, sound files (e.g., water, birds) and a "foresting" technique used for filling large areas quickly. Each hole can have up to 18 pin positions in groups of six labeled easy, normal or hard.

Think you've got what it takes to compete against the pros? Find out in Links 2001 -- Arnie's waiting for you!

Review: Overall

After playing Links 2001 since its release, I'm tempted to draw an analogy between the game and the second movie in the The Blair Witch Project series. Both are disappointing in the extreme, both try to fix things that aren't broken, and both pay the price for too much hype and not enough substance. More is the pity.

Touted as the first significant upgrade in the Links series in a decade, Links 2001 burst on the scene amid great fanfare and not so subtle boasting that the revision would easily re-establish the game as the ace atop the ever growing heap of cyber golfing games. Well, the votes are in and the winner is - not Links 2001. And we don't even need a recount.

The game shipped with more bugs than a swamp-infested hazard. Simple Golfing 101 tenets were abused, discarded or overlooked. Things that worked in Links 2000 don't in the latest version and trumped up enhancements detract more than improve gameplay in several areas. To push the golf metaphor to the limit, Links 2001 fails to even break par in its abortive attempt to rewrite the annals of cyber golf.

Let's get the Arnold Palmer Course Designer out of the way first. Finally, the time has come when Links owners can stop paying $25-$30 for each new course (maybe one every three months if lucky) and feed off the ever-popular trend of designing their own golfing venues and downloading others from like-minded cyber golfers on the Internet. Links 2001 offers the user a chance to finally do what other successful golf simulations such as PGA Championship Golf and the Jack Nicklaus series have been doing for years.

From the peak of anticipation to the pique of creation - the ludicrously uninformative and hopelessly inept documentation in the manual and online instructional help doesn't remotely provide enough data for the casual gamer to even begin to complete a playable course within a reasonable time period. In my first abortive attempts at course creation, four hours were spent trying to contour a single bunker - that's more time than laying out a complete course and finishing a couple of holes in the PGA Championship Golf 2000 designer takes.

An engineering degree isn't mandatory in order to decipher the processes required to understand course design in Links 2001 but it wouldn't hurt. From initial layout to final tweaking and the nearly 2001 aspects in between, course design using the Arnold Palmer Course Designer is brutal and not for the faint hearted. You find yourself taking a crash course in such terms and applications as vertices, edges, hulls, interior regions, XYZ axis combinations, scaling, texture bleed - and this is just the tip of the tee.

Many of the "homemade" Links 2001 courses I've played are rife with problems. Get too close to a stream and instead of gurgling benignly along the ground it appears as a dark streak across the middle of the screen, blocking out the view directly ahead - more than likely due to layering problems. Bunkers and tee boxes with sharp edges abound that could only be achieved in real life by a backhoe operator gone bonkers. Greens inundated with water from a pond or a lake located dozens of yards away, causing putts to disappear through the dark splotches until reappearing near the flag.

The list goes on. I'm not condemning these courses - only the course designer that allows so many convoluted results due to its overly technical and glaringly non-user-friendly interface. No doubt, designers with the patience and time to commit to developing a course will become evident in time and some seriously good courses will appear on the Links horizon (a few already have).

It's an ugly picture that can be wrought by a wannabe designer who doesn't fully grasp the horrifically detailed and overly tedious aspects of the designer. It can't emphasized enough how much time is required to fully understand the massive rules, strict and exacting processes and limiting regulations involved in designing a Links 2001 course - that is, designing it so that the plethora of potential glitches don't surface during gameplay.

But, taking four to six months to design such a course (humbly predicting with a conservative estimate of what it would take to get it right in every aspect) is, to my way of thinking, just not fun. And, my golf hat's off to any of those hearty souls committed to getting it right and, even more, my heart goes out to all those designers, who like me, find the designer to be much more trouble than it's worth. I'll take the easy way out and wait for the skillful designers to take the stage.

While talking about courses, it was shocking that not one of the 39 previously released Links courses could be played with Links 2001. Other than a handful of courses that come with the game, the Links 2001 fan is up the aforementioned flying creek until the cream of the homemade crop of courses begins to rise to the top.

Shortly after release (late 2000) and after much discussion by irate fans through online forums, Microsoft announced a planned free downloadable "course converter" that will address this oversight (Editor's Note: not released at the time of this review (Dec 2000)). Regardless of this "patch" (which is also purported in some circles to deal with over 200 issues), the converter should have been included as part of the original "finished" package. The fact that it isn't, is an indication of the "rush to release" mentality of the publishers who were anxious to regain lost footing in the cyber-golf wars. Unconscionable excuse.

Moving on to gameplay and the enhancements found therein, the addition of the color-coded green-reading grid is a novel (and pretty) idea but not particularly helpful for use in putting. What is a significant enhancement, though, is the directional arrow that pops up when you invoke the aiming pin on the green. Now this is a worthy idea and one that works quite well for golfers who enjoy putting by "feel" rather than by calculating numbers (adding grid squares, dividing by the hypotenuse of the inverse of the proportionate slant - well, veteran Linksters will know what I'm driving at).

A potential patch issue is the serious intermittent problem of the mouse not responding to a second or third click when taking your shot. It doesn't matter if you're smashing a drive, laying up with an iron, blasting a wedge or stroking a putt, there are times when the second or third click (used to "set" the shot) using both the classic two or three stroke meter methods, doesn't "take," resulting in a shot well wide-right of the target.

At first something was wrong, thinking my mouse drivers were out of date - that is until stumbling upon legions of players with the same problem on the online golf forums. This problem isn't so bad if you're playing a solitary round of golf and can use the "option" to abort your shot by clicking the right mouse button during the shot (a terrible "cheating" option that resets you over the ball without even charging a mulligan). But, playing in tournament mode or against other players, this can be a disastrous non-recoverable lost stroke in the heat of battle.

To alleviate the problem, the zero key on the keyboard number pad was used to take my shots rather than the mouse. At least it responds all of the time. This is such a basic mistake in program execution, one has to wonder at the depth of beta testing that went into the product. This isn't something that crops up during an occasional round, it has happened to me during every round I've played where the keyboard option wasn't used.

It's not possible to cover every glitch encountered in the game at this point but one glaring and annoying setup feature that must be addressed is the setting of camera views. Suppose you open the window that allows an optional choice of various camera angles for tracking your shots (I'll use the "reverse landing cam" as an example) and go to the trouble of further configuring it to "clip objects." Wouldn't you think the setting would remain in place for all future rounds since this is your preferred selection of viewing? Well, it doesn't. You have to reset the option every single time you play.

Why are we hearing the same sounds and crowd noises we heard in Links 99 or Links 2000? There's not even an announcer for tournament mode - nearly every other reputable golf game on the market in the year 2000 has that option, regardless if one chooses to use it or not. And woe be to the golfer who scores an eagle during a competitive round with the crowd sounds turned on - the clapping goes on and on and then on some more with no way to stop it until it runs its course. If that weren't bad enough, the crowd often groans or breaks out in spontaneous cheering or applause at the wrong time.

Some of the newer features are, without doubt, nice to have and do enhance gameplay somewhat. Being able to personalize club distances is a nice touch (but not new to the golf gaming world) as is the on-green aiming arrow. But it seems that for every improvement, the designers offset it with something less desirable. A good example is the ridiculous lack of the ability to even change your golfer's shirt color - what's with that? Saving room for the nattily dressed but less than functional green grid?

It's these small, niggling and obviously careless design aspects that really grate on me when playing Links 2001. The game, at its core, is still the brilliant looking, smooth playing game the designers have been pumping out year after year. The age old problem of scoring being too easy in Links is still apparent although this version seems to try and address it by allowing golfing more so through "feel" than "computation." But, is it the most significant upgrade in a decade? No - the inclusion of the power swing a few iterations back was more significant.

With a little more care, a bit more play testing, a layman's course designer, access to previous courses and better attention to detail, Links 2001 would easily have reacquired its status as the preferred virtual golfing venue on the market. It may still be the most purchased and generally accepted golf game in the arena but discerning fans, true golfing fans, should still be put off by a game that allows "pros" to regularly shoot 56, 57 and 58 in a round of golf. (Don't believe me? Check out some of the online tournament scores!)

To some, myself included, the popularity of Links can be equated to the popularity of Myst - a glossy, glitzy package that appeals to the masses of non-discerning gamers - casual gamers, if you will. The purists, the experts, the pros of the various genres will not be content with the lack of substance over glitter. Substance counts when you take your gaming seriously.

In an industry where newer usually means better, it's ironic that one of the best golf games on the market is one that is no longer being produced - Jack Nicklaus 6: Golden Bear Challenge. With its literally hundreds, if not thousands, of courses available for a reasonable size download (I've seen Links 2001 courses at 40MB+ and we're still in the early stages of consumer design here), smooth gameplay, less "sterile" looking "boxed" graphics and more reasonable scoring aspects, the game still shines.

As for course designers, both the Nicklaus and PGA Championship Golf 2000 modules run rings around the Arnold Palmer Course Designer in terms of ease of use and time investment required to get a decent product. Indeed, the results of the Nicklaus designer in the hands of true experts like Brian Silvernail or Scott Chesney are simply awesome and Silvernail's Links 2001 designs are expected to follow suit.

If you have Links 2000 or prior, stick with it awhile if you want to play previously released courses. Upgrade to Links 2001 if you simply must test your merits in mastering course design through tedium. Other than that one aspect, there is nothing of significant substance to induce a quick purchase for "improved" play. At the very least, wait until all the patches are released or until the next iteration of the game with all the bugs squashed is released. In the meantime, for diversity and enjoyable golfing and course design, PGA Championship Golf 2000 is a viable alternative.

This is one bandwagon I'm not going to jump on simply because the name Links is involved. And any discerning, cyber golfers who spend any significant time with this game will surely reach the same conclusions. Mainstream publications will no doubt continue the myth of this venerable golfing entity, but, then, so did the singers of praise for Myst.

Review: Enjoyment

The mouse glitches ruin many a good round if you're not conscious of the possibility they can occur or don't use alternate swing methods. The lack of a course converter put me off immediately with pangs of palpable disappointment. Having close to $1000 dollars worth of previously purchased courses sitting on my gaming shelf, unusable with this upgrade (unless opting to keep last year's edition of the game on my hard drive), is both absurd and maddening. Scoring remains too easy in the game (a problem since its inception). Three options for wind conditions: none, breezy or windy. What happened to slight or mild? There are far too many small annoyances or nuisances of this nature found throughout the game to ensure complete enraptured gameplay.

Review: Graphics

Animated birds circle in a "stack" in one place in the distance (are they vultures?), water fails to "flow," up close objects tend to be pixellated and blocky. Overall, though, the graphic displays of golf courses are well rendered and pleasant to view. Camera settings are temporary and reverse angles don't always line up properly. Removal of the ability to change on-screen golfer appearances, included in earlier iterations, is baffling and a poor design choice.

Review: Sound

Absolutely nothing new of significance in this department. Applause goes on too long in spots, no announcers, same old crowd noises (a few new gasps thrown in) -- just not what you'd expect in "the most significant upgrade in a decade." Sergio Garcia's speech is at best a muffled mumble most of the time and Annika Sorenstam's short-clipped responses don't add much to the experience.

Review: Replay Value

Any game with a course designer has unlimited play possibilities, regardless of how difficult it is to use. There will always be gamers committed to getting it right who will be able to stomach the tedium involved with using the Arnold Palmer Course Designer.

Review: Documentation

Very poor, flimsy booklet for a game touted as the most significant upgrade in a decade. Many of the keyboard short cut features are not documented in the book and the section on the course designer, considering what's really involved in actual design, is a joke (albeit not funny). Lack of any serious attempt to provide substantive pictures to accompany the documentation is just plain cheap and easy -- the manual seems to have been thrown together as an afterthought.

Production Credits