Ribbit King

Do you remember Disney's animated version of Alice in Wonderland? Remember the scene when Alice and the Queen of Hearts played a weird game of croquet where flamingos were the mallets and hedgehogs were the balls? Okay, now imagine if the Queen used frogs instead of hedgehogs and the game was golf instead of croquet. That's the basic idea behind Ribbit King.

Ribbit King is one of few sports games that have an actual story mode, but that's not entirely a positive. The story involves a kid named Scooter who looks like a squashed version of Finn from Adventure Time. His planet is running out of a special material, and the only way to get more is to win an interplanetary frolf (man, that word sounds stupid!) tournament. The story is as stupid as many anime aimed at young children. On top of that, the aesthetics are a bit on the weak side. While it is nice that each wide open course is colorful and rendered well, everything is still pretty blocky. I'm convinced the game could've been made to work on the Nintendo 64 or Dreamcast with very little effort. The characters ranging from a walking picnic basket to a one-eyed rock monster all look dopey, and the voice acting is flat-out awful. I found myself skipping the cutscenes constantly just to preserve my sanity.

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Fortunately, the gameplay in the story and multiplayer modes is very good. A top-down view makes aiming very easy, and you never have to worry about impact on the stroke meter. Draws and fades are even available and easy to use. The twenty courses spread across five biomes are wide open, allowing any number of ways to reach the hole. However, reaching the cup (more like a pond) is not enough to win. There are tons of objects all over each hole which can add or deduct points from your score, and racking up points is actually more vital to winning than reaching the pond first. While this does add a lot of strategy to the game, it also adds a bit of cheapness. There were several times I scored aces but still lost because my opponent racked up more points along the way. While the point system can be a headache in the story mode, it does make for interesting multiplayer games.

Ribbit King is certainly unique, much like Ninja Golf. Games like this are the reason I enjoy playing and talking about golf video games. I wish I could give a full recommendation to this one. However, the story is so stupid it hurts, and the gameplay has moments of cheapness that do add up in the long run. Still, I had plenty of fun whacking frogs with hammers all the same. While it's not something to put on for PGA pros, it can be an interesting choice for a VERY open-minded gaming party.