Like, I would imagine, the majority of Xbox 360 gamers, I’ve been avoiding the Community Games section – an area of the dashboard opened up when the NXE opened up last year, and allowed members of the community to make and sell their own games through the console. Simply put, there were just too many titles on there and not enough hours in the day to wade through all the demos and the like.
But yesterday, based on a glowing Eurogamer review, I purchased my first community game: Easy Golf Course Creator, and you can colour me very impressed indeed. At 800 points, it may seem a little on the steep side (though that’s only 5 Rock Band songs, to put it in context) but it does more than enough to convince me of its worth. Especially as the game’s creator is currently running a contest for players of the game to win 1600 points by getting low scores on the courses.
Despite being designed by just one man (who goes under the company name of Barkers Crest Studio), the game very rarely exposes its bedroom-developer roots. It comes complete with 6 nine-hole courses (originally it was 3, but the guy behind it has recently given away 3 more), and has a system in place for users to design their own golfing nightmares and share them with friends to make the 8-player multiplayer all the more long-lived.
Despite having never held a golf club in my life, I’ve really enjoyed my time with this, and the ability to design and share your own courses makes it feel a little like a playable version of the wonderful tycooning game “Sim Golf”. The impressive thing is how easy it is to use, and within minutes I was testing and tweaking course designs that looked surprisingly professional.
It’s not perfect, and the ball physics feel a little off at times, but if you’re looking for an arcadey golf game to play with friends over Live, I urge you to give this a try and support a genuinely talented and dedicated indie developer. The fact that it doesn’t feel far removed from my time spent on the GameCube classic Mario Golf tells you just how well Barkers Crest Studio has done.
It’s out now, and can be added to your 360 download queue through the Xbox.com website, which is a lot easier than finding it on the dashboard.
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