Mario golf has always been a hit with gamers, well designed courses, lots of unlockable items and tons of single player fun. Now Nintendo ramps it up with Mario Golf: World Tour for the 3DS, featuring the same easy to pick up and master approach. After many tournaments you’ll be able to put a spin or hook on the ball and get that elusive hole in one. Nintendo has also added lots of online play features including tournaments and other test your skills modes to play.

Mario Golf: World Tour has a new Castle Club house for the single player campaign. Here you can upgrade your gear, practice the main 3 courses, enter tournaments with your personal Mii or even hang out with Mario and his friends in the club house. The RPG elements have been removed from the previous game, this is now a straight golf game where you can move up in the single player or multiplayer tournaments. As you win in the game, it will unlock gear for your Mii. Toad’s tutorials in the club house are very useful and should be used so you can master hooking and spinning your shots. Tips are thrown out throughout the game and you can practice any course you like over and over to master all the important points of golf such as wind direction, putting and more. There is quite a lot of content that can be unlocked, from more courses to new players you can use in the Quick Play mode.

The gameplay remains almost the same as the previous games, you can use the power meter on top to time the button press or the giant golf ball on the touch screen. The touch screen contains camera options, swing and club selection choices. The camera is easily positioned using the analog and d-pad when on the fairway; the putting camera on the other hand is really poor. While you can use the built in accelerometer to move your 3ds to “look around”, you can NOT position the marker for where you wish to putt. The camera is fixed and sometimes stuck in a view where you cannot see the marker over the hole, makes for a frustrating putt sometimes.

Once you are done with the Campaign mode, head back to the main menu for quick games such as Tournament, Stroke Play or even online play. The courses are filled with coins to collect, booster ramps that fling your ball further and even boxes from the Mario games. The online play allows up to 4 people to play online, you can play in real time against each other or play alternating turns. There is also Tournaments you can enter, when you join a tournament created by a player, you will play through a pre-selected course and then upload your “play through” and score to the tournament, when the end date passes, the winners will be announced. Nintendo will also be holding special online tournaments starting on May 22, 2014 where they will be giving away Callaway in game gear for your Mii. These tournaments will be announced via SpotPass, so be sure to keep that Wi-Fi connected on your 3DS and in sleep mode.

Mario Golf: World Tour is a well-developed franchise that is a must own for any sports fan on the 3DS. With the Single Player and Multiplayer features, you’ll be playing this game for a very long time!

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