Infinite Minigolf (Xbox One) Review

The art style of Infinite Minigolf contains a playful charm to it that is reminiscent of playthings from a child's toy box. Sporting generic clothes to start off, everything about them can be adjusted as new items and clothes are unlocked. Playing minigolf also takes part in three different themed worlds: "Giant Home" is set in a child's bedroom with everything shrunk down to toy level, "Nightmare Mansion" is the horror-themed world with ghosts and werewolves, and "Santa's Factory" is the winter wonderland in the North Pole. These three base worlds look quite pretty for blocky worlds that are more akin to a Mario Kart-style look.

The solo mode provides four different tournaments per world, with each tournament containing an "Easy," "Medium," and "Hard" mode. This allows for multiple replays of the same levels, with progressively difficult AI competitors and one or two new obstacles to make trick shots harder to pull off. However, in saying that, these tournaments are not all that difficult to smash out in a few sittings, and can easily be breezed through quite quickly. Although that's not to say it is a bad thing, as the tournament is merely a single-player run prelude to the fan-created content that is shared online through the "Quick Play" mode.

"Quick Play" jumps right into a randomly selected minigolf course from other users' created content. This is where the infinite in the game's title really comes into play, as there are an almost endless supply of courses to play through, with more added every day. The only limit here is the users themselves and their will to create new courses. Of course, not all fan-made courses are great, but thanks to the handy thumbs-up rating system, rated courses are filtered and can easily be accessed again from the "Course Browser."

While playing minigolf is fun and all, there are missions that give purpose to the sport. There are five missions that must all be completed in order to advance to the next level, where more clothes and shop purchases await. Then there are the general missions of three, which are easier to obtain and they reward in coins. These coins in turn only serve the purpose to buy one of three different card packs. The card packs contain cards with which items and clothes in the store are purchased with.

This entire concept seems like a really confusing detour, and it hardly makes sense why the coins weren't used to buy clothes items to begin with. Spending coins on any card pack but the $2,000 one is a waste of time and money, as they will only deal out cards, which are quite plentiful when sticking to the missions, anyway. The real bonus with the most expensive card pack is that it also contains a random store unlock, which is the only reason to even buy that card pack to begin with.

While there is an assortment of goodies to purchase with in-game currency, they too don't take a long time to unlock. Before too long, the entire store will be bereft of new items and the solo courses will be completed, leaving the only real staying power up to the fan-made courses, and the endless supply of missions. However, if Zen Studios has shown things in the past, it's that Infinite Minigolf will not lack for new courses as DLC.

Creating courses isn't as hard as it seems, as the creation method is simplified with easy-to-understand icons that have to be cycled through. While it is a bit taxing due to the limitations of the controller, it is still quite easy to piece together courses to get started, and uploading them for shared use is simply a button away. With lots of practice, and seeing what works and what doesn't, it won't be long before more advanced courses are created and shown off.

The only real downside to this package is that the online mode is, at least while writing this review, dead. Regardless what time of the day it was, the online seems to lack other players to generate even a PvP game. Once the online community is larger and bustling with players, this will surely be a fun mode to waste countless hours in; however, at this time Infinite Minigolf really cannot be sold on this feature, which is a shame. If there are friends nearby or family members, though, then local competition works perfectly fine, and can really ignite the competitive spirit amongst friends.