Golf Club Wasteland: PS4 Review

Platform: PS4

Developer: Demagog Studios

Published by Untold Tales

Golf Club: Wasteland is probably more about the atmosphere than the mechanics of the golf, which in truth, feels like a crazy golf game more than your proper 18 rounds on the green.

Set on Earth after a disaster destroyed the atmosphere, you play a man in a hazmat suit who was part of the escapees who fled to Mars. But they've returned to hit some balls into some holes and to scour the planet as they play.

To be honest, the golf is perhaps the weakest part of this game, thanks to the mechanics of how it plays and the wild inconsistencies of how you hit the ball.

Simply moving the left stick creates an arrow and elevation and the power that you hit the ball. A push of the X button fires the ball off on its way. However, the issue is that sometimes the arrow's length and elevation doesn't correspond to what comes from the shot over 35 holes. And given that's the large thrust of Golf Club: Wasteland, it's a bit of a disappointment.

Equally, there's no simple indication of what par each hole is on screen, meaning every time you load a hole up, you have to pause, go into the menu and select the relevant hole before the answer is revealed. It's less than ideal, and to be honest, detracts from the atmosphere of the game.

There are 35 holes and each one comes with its own unique edge, but physics just isn't what Golf Club Wasteland is truly about.

More engaging are the snippets of life before on Earth and what the human race found engaging, the likes of which help to build the quirky indie feel of Golf Club wasteland and serve to give some context. 

With scifi trappings, and Radio Nostalgia a radio station that provides ambient music as well as snippets of the past, Golf Club Wasteland is more effective as a rumination on our lives than on the green.

Golf Club Wasteland isn't really a hole in one overall, but it's an intriguing and relatively competently executed take on a golfing sim with the potential to keep you off world for a few hours.