Links 2004

Well, it's the end of the road for Round 3 of the Defunct Games Golf Club. Thank you once again for joining me for this journey through the history of golf games, and I hope you'll join me next year for the Final Round. Back in the first round of the Golf Club, I fired quite a few shots at Links: The Challenge of Golf on the Sega CD. To this day, I still consider it the worst golf game I ever played. Fortunately, new developers and Microsoft took over the series and steered it back on course, culminating with Links 2004, the best thing to be linked to Microsoft's short-lived XSN Sports banner.

It's clear that the developers were huge fans of the Tiger Woods PGA Tour franchise as this game does rip off that series rather blatantly. The career mode is very similar with tournaments and some annoying special challenges parsed out, a large supply of official gear to use, and winnings being used to buy skill points to upgrade your custom golfer. There are seven real-life courses to play on (including the always popular St. Andrews) along with one fictitious course. The camera flourishes used for great shots are ripped straight from that series and used almost too much. There are lots of similarities.

Click For the Full Picture Archive
There are also plenty of differences, and most of those definitely work in Links' favor. The analog swing is much more forgiving, even providing a handy marker to help judge power. Applying spin is as easy as holding the right thumbstick in the direction you want. The game plays much faster with only the initial load time being lengthy. The putting mechanics are fantastic with a simple guideline to help with aim. There are also tons of game modes including numerous variations of fourball and stableford. It actually makes me wish this game could still be played on Xbox Live. It still looks fantastic today with lush vegetation and tons of detail on the courses. Were it not for some stuttering animation, it would be almost impossible to tell this game apart from a golf game on the Xbox One. The issues are trivial. The three-person commentary is very stilted; it became annoying to listen to after a while. Hitting the ranking plateaus to unlock new tours gets very difficult by the end of the career mode. The character creator is rather limited; there just aren't a lot of variations available.

Links 2004 was the competition that EA's golf series needed. It took advantage of the Xbox's capabilities and delivered a golf game that still delivers to this day. It's just a shame that Microsoft abandoned sports games after XSN's inaugural season. Hey, Microsoft, is it too late to bring this back?