The 28th of May will be a significant day for me this year - it is the date that my best mate, Martin, will be getting married and I have the wonderful (see: daunting) honour of being his “best-man”. Traditionally, being elected best man brings with it three main responsibilities: getting the groom absolutely blind drunk and humiliating him as much as possible on a stag night, ensuring he arrives at church on time and standing up and speaking to a room full of half-family / half-total strangers and humiliating the groom some more by telling embarrassing stories about him for ten minutes. Now the first two should not present any problems but it’s the third one I’m having trouble with. In fact, I probably shouldn’t even be writing this piece, but, at the moment, my mind is simply not on the job.

Kill two birdies with one stone.

The 1st of October last year was also significant day for me - it was the day I purchased and started playing Everybody’s Golf on the PSP. I know this was the date, not because of an obsessive-compulsive memory for dates or even because I have the receipt, but because the game has kindly stored this fact in its History. It’s a history which has seen me gain my first hole-in-one 26 days after I started playing, achieve a 200+ yard Chip-In a week later, reach 100 games played in total just after Bonfire Night, scale up to the heady heights of Gold in Challenge Mode in the New Year and, most recently, become a certified EG Sage. Despite all this I still appear to be no closer to finishing the Challenge Mode section of the game and, at the moment, I feel my history in the game counts for this: nought.

And this is precisely the reason why I am having difficulty preparing a best man’s speech. Because I want to become Everybody’s Daddy on Everybody’s Golf, I’m simply too pre-occupied thinking about how I’m either going to get the last gold star in a 18 hole Golden Desert Tournament or try and beat ‘Sweet Tooth’ in a Match Play game on the unforgiving Dino Park and win the ballerina tutu giving my player essential Control points but also bearing in mind that there’s no backspin available and its +2 shots for going in the rough! No doubt fellow Rodents will appreciate the predicament I am in!

Lovely weather for golf.

The truth is I will be fully prepared in time for the big wedding day, speech in hand and all. It’s not in my nature to be letting people down especially with something like this but it is in my nature to be a completist / perfectionist ass that isn’t happy until he’s wrung every last drop out of a good game. With Everybody’s Golf however, it’s difficult not to be. The game starts hard and plays hard (putting is especially difficult to get to grips with) but much like a kitten that’s just realized it can climb its way up your trouser leg to reach you for a stroke, once EG gets its claws into you it makes sure you endure a bit of pain for a small reward. Of course, you don’t have to do everything the game throws at you but if you want to be reaching those higher classes, you may find yourself periodically backtracking to build up those Power and Impact levels.

In fairness, this is a title that keeps on giving, albeit in measured 2.5ml doses taken once every 4 hours. It makes you work but, most importantly, it makes you think. Slowly and steadily, you will determine the best angles for those awkward lies, you will correctly judge the power to sink those 15 meter putts with the wind against you and, best of all, you will realise there is a light at the end of Challenge Mode tunnel. It takes a little while for EG to reveal its true charms but the Nintendo style presentation and menu screens, bold, colourful graphics, perfectly judged difficulty curve, excellent control system and seemingly never-ending challenges will keep you busy in the meantime. Appearing just shy of the top ten in the Rodent Top 25 of 2005, I can’t help but think it would have gotten a little higher had it been released earlier in the year but that’s another story…

No need for silly trousers with this version

The fact is I love this game and that’s quite an achievement considering I couldn’t give a flying fig for the sport in real life. Better still, I’ve feel I’ve only just scratched the surface. There’s Stroke Play and Putt Golf to contend with which I’m sure will pre-occupy more hours, days and weeks of my time not to mention the ability to play wirelessly against human opponents in ‘Golf with Everybody’ – a feature which could well be more addictive than smoking crack whilst playing…well, Everybody’s Golf I guess and now I’ve finished this, I suppose my next job is to make a start on my best man’s speech. Thanks to this game though I’m a little worried that a few golfing related puns about Martin ‘sinking his balls’ or enjoying ‘a bit of rough’ may creep into my speech. Being my best mate, I’m sure he’ll understand.

June 2006

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