We're well ahead of Mario Golf: World Tour's scheduled May 2 release on the 3DS, but the critics' scores are are already dropping on the green like loose women on Tiger Woods. Check 'em a gathering below to see if the game's for you when it releases next week.
IGN, 8.6 - "Mario Golf: World Tour is a fine game overall, with lots of ways to play and a challenges that reward skill, but what makes it great is how smoothly its levels progress you from beginner to unstoppable golfing machine. This sense of progression, paired with lots of content and smart multiplayer options, make it a worthwhile way to spend your time...The bulk of Mario Golf is made up of three courses, each with 18 holes, and they all have something new to teach you...Mario Golf steadily ramps up in difficulty, but it intelligently teaches you new skills the whole time...After finishing the campaign, there are plenty of additional challenge maps to unlock. Finding them is a bit tricky because they’re located in a separate set of menus, even though they directly tie-in with the main map area. But once you do, Mario Golf opens up into a new kind of game that’s focused on trick shots...You don’t have to be a hardcore golf fan to get hooked on Mario Golf: World Tour. It rewards good play, gives plenty to do, and is a great teacher. Its incremental approach to challenge kept me coming back to test myself, and the post-game challenges and multiplayer modes inspired me to play in new ways even after I thought I was a pro.
Destructoid, 8.5 - "In keeping with tradition, Mario Golf: World Tour has some enjoyable RPG-like elements. Walking around the club is like being in any JRPG's town; and it's packed with NPCs to chat with and learn from, rooms to visit, attractions to see, shops to spend at, and fun mini-games to take on...The equipment system of World Tour is not unlike that of a role-playing game. With coins earned from completing matches and other challenges you'll be able to buy new balls, clubs, and clothing to tweak your stats. In this game, even a couple of yards advantage gained from a new club can make a huge difference. Picking the right gear is a lot like equipping before a key battle. The courses of Mario Golf: World Tour are very good, though none of them would qualify as easy. Hills, traps, obstacles, and weather conditions keep you on your toes at all time. There's rarely a situation where you'll just be able to take the recommended shot and succeed, which is nice for those that like a challenge, but maybe not so much for younger players. All courses have that Nintendo charm, so expect star-shaped sand traps, colorful trees, happy clouds, and explosive Bob-ombs that serve as course obstacles. They're pretty, but not easy...Mario Golf: World Tour's presentation is strong, especially when it comes to the varied characters and costumes. The course designs are colorful and exciting, and they're packed with little secrets to find. The low resolution of the shot grid is the only place where the presentation of World Tour lets you down...It has been worth the wait, as Mario Golf: World Tour took that next step and brought us an outstanding online golf experience. The learning curve is steep, and there are some issues with the camera and aiming control, but working through them is worth it as the online play is outstanding."
NowGamer, 8 - "If you ignore the (hugely successful) implementation of motion control, videogames that depict the sport of golf haven’t changed a great deal since NES Golf, which is now almost thirty years old. Playing a round of golf with thumbsticks and a few buttons still involves, essentially, fine-tuning quick time events for yourself; pick the right kit, line up the perfect shot, and try not to fluff the power meter mini-game. Hot Shots Golf may look nothing like Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14, but they were both built on the same dependable groundwork. So it’s impossible to criticise Mario Golf: World Tour for not breaking the mould...The gyroscope is great for scoping out the land ahead, but (as always) it’s rendered entirely useless when the 3D slider is at maximum...The game’s most intriguing ingredient - the asynchronous online contest suite - is adequate but agreeably compelling. You can create your own tournaments (either for all comers or just for your friends) or alternately you can join one of the constantly updated roster of official competitions. At present these are all fairly uninspiring (most of them are Coin Rush battles or short contests that force you to play with a couple of specific characters) and the lack of a decent scoring system means that you’re always drawing with hundreds of other people... but there is real scope for Nintendo to do some interesting things with the service. And even if they don’t, the community surely will. The online competitions may not be quite as compelling or slick as they initially sounded, but Mario Golf: World Tour can still basically be classed as a robust and enthralling near must-have. Perfect it isn’t, but that age-old formula clearly still has quite a bit of pep left in it. Mario Golf: World Tour is a smart and exceptionally well made diversion that will, for some, fly or fail on the durability of its online component. The good news is that online play measures up. Just about."
GamesRadar, 8 - "Nintendo's return to the back nine brings with it the familiar arcade-style golfing the series is known for, and while it doesn't bring much new to the franchise, the dependable quality of the sports action warrants setting up a tee time. Mario Golf: World Tour is competent at its worst and excellent at its best. It keeps its gameplay tight and approachable, looks great in stereoscopic 3D, and finally has a modernized approach to online multiplayer. This isn’t a hole-in-one, but it stays under par throughout--and the fact that I can’t stop using golf terminology is proof that World Tour is at least an eagle in my book."
Edge, 6 - "The first Mario Golf game in a decade has no idea what it wants to be. The good walk spoiled has always been Mario’s safest sporting home, a place for Nintendo and its trusted caddy Camelot to play with the boundaries of both reality and its own fictions. NES Open Tournament stripped golf back to its component parts to create something appropriately accessible. N64′s Mario Golf embraced the Mushroom Kingdom’s quirks as a way of extricating itself from the increasingly sim-obsessed Western development crowd. Advance Tour, meanwhile, wove in RPG elements, so escaping the rote repeat play of previous instalments. World Tour teases out the fundamentals of each of these approaches in some way, but refuses to ever pin its colours to any one mast, nor create its own, resulting in a game that feels undercooked and ill thought-out...This inability to decide where World Tour lies among the many paths the series has taken previously is the game’s true problem. It demonstrates both why Camelot is so trusted by Nintendo, and why it has been stuck making sporting spinoffs for so long. Camelot seems unsure of whether it would prefer to be held by the hand or simply set free, and ends up putting the player in that same awkward middle ground."
Digital Spy, 6 - "The marriage between Mario Golf: World Tour's Nintendo-glossed shell and the deceptively deep golf game that sits beneath that smudging of color works decently, but the Mario sheen too often becomes an obtrusion of the golf itself...Once you're out on the course, the magic of World Tour begins to come to life, but the game still grapples with a dual personality that never quite settles on one identity. It looks fantastic, with color and charm packed into every character, course and club, but even in the various locales there's a dichotomy between the main courses and the more recognizable Nintendo-themed affair that complete the game's roster of ten...As a Nintendo game, Mario Golf: World Tour feels uncharacteristically clunky. When the tense thrill of the course takes you, it's a great experience that packs a lot of potential depth, but with confused structures and systems, it takes patience to see the best World Tour has to offer. That's the nature of golf, then, but with the magic of Mario lining the seams, it feels like this game doesn't know quite where it wants to land."
