I feel like I should start this with an apology to the team at No Goblin. I see what you were trying to do, and I deeply appreciate the effort that went into making this game a reality. I REALLY wanted to love this game, and even held off on writing this for a couple days to see if some extra play time would sway me to find some more redeeming qualities...and I did!
The truth is 100 Ft Robot Golf is a great low budget anime. The cinematics and dialogue are rife with great humor and cornball stuff that will put a smile on your face. Just as an example, take this scene here which really embodies the "it's so stupid it's funny" vibe.
Unfortunately, the cinematics and dialogue should not be the high point in a game where massive robots play golf and destroy cities. The concept sounds amazing right? You can just imagine the amount of mayhem, robot fighting, and monster battles that go down while battling right?
This is the reality.
There's a lot wrong with this game and if that video wasn't enough here's a list of the various issues I found in this game...
- You cannot attack other robots.
- Most of the campaign does not follow the traditional rules of golf, but rather awards players based on how quickly they get the ball in the hole regardless of stroke count.
- Players have weapons that primarily exist because they look cool and can sometimes destroy buildings.
- There's no consistency between robots on how you hit the ball. This sounds cool and fun until you realize some robots have obscenely easier ways of hitting than other characters.
- Collision detection is an issue and I've gotten my robot stuck a couple of times.
- Special moves either don't work or I don't understand how they work. Either way, they don't affect the game.
There's more I could list but I think you get the idea. It's a damn shame as the story, characters, dialogue...they're all fantastic. In fact, if No Goblin were to remove the game entirely and make this a short series on Youtube it would be an instant hit. This game features 5 Corgi's who team up to form a Voltron...tell me that's not viral worthy?
So here's what I say to the team at No Goblin as my voice chimes in with the increasing amount of bad press this game is getting. Take the good from this game, and turn it into something awesome. Golfing and giant robots aren't your thing, but if you made a Phoenix Wright type anime game I think you'd make a killing on it.
