The Final Round
PlayStation Review by Nils Jacobsen

Final Round is the first golf game available from Konami, joining an already crowded golf game arena for the PlayStation. (A total of five are available as of Sep-96.) It touts six unique texture-mapped golfers, many camera views, play-by-play announcer etc. Sadly, it only features one golf course, of unknown origin... That is a problem, since the PGA Tour series from EA features two official courses, and Tecmo Golf features 101 courses. Somehow, six unique texture-mapped golfers don't make up the loss of course variation.

In the graphics department The Final Round fares OK. It has some cool water reflection effects etc., but nothing that makes it stand out from the crowd. The players are all polygon characters, somewhat like the cast of Tekken 2. The characters differ in strength, technique, luck etc.

Sounds are no more than OK. Music is sparse, but adequate. The ambient sound effects are all there, birds, rivers etc. Clapping is totally "tin can", really bad. The announcer is very "unconvincing." All the comments I heard were all read from a script it seemed, by some guy off the street. Compare that to the year old PGA Tour 96, where he whispers when giving putting advice etc. and it seems pretty bad.

Playing the game is somewhat frustrating, it seems like you have to press an awful lot of buttons before the ball finally is hit. Here is the procedure:
  1. Choose camera angle
  2. Choose direction
  3. Choose stance
  4. Choose club
  5. Chose ball impact point vertical
  6. Choose ball impact point horizontal
  7. Strength of swing
  8. Action
    I should say that you can enable the "easy ball" option, which skips 5 and 6. However, compared to the two hits of PGA Tour, the "easy to play arcade-style interface" seems a bit awkward. At least for the casual golfer... The impact point setup is kinda cool, but also frustrating. The cool part is that, with some skill, you can choose the point on the ball where you want the club to hit. The frustrating part is that once you've chosen that point, there is no way back. Even though you know the shot is going nowhere, you still have to finish the shot. (Kinda like real life, I guess.) No Mulligans, either.

    Lack of courses, mediocre graphics, bad in the sound department and awkward gameplay doesn't add up to much. All in all, we can't recommend this game except for maybe the extreme golf game deprived. Definitely rent before you buy!

    HomeThis review is (C) 1996 Nils Jacobsen and may not be re-distributed in any form, including news groups or other web sites. If you have questions, email Webmaster@vidgames.com.