What The Golf? (Nintendo Switch) Review

What the Golf? burst onto PC and mobile in September of last year and Switch fans rubbed their hands in anticipation of this truly crazy golf title. It's difficult to convey just what What the Golf? is. It's a golf game, obviously… well, kind of, but it's more a manic collection of mini-games that take inspiration from many other notable gaming series and titles. There is an absolute mammoth amount of stages here, all with the basic premise of getting an item in a hole (or often just touching the flag), but how it gets there is where the fun begins.

First up is the campaign mode, where the golf ball navigates around a series of labs, each with a specific theme. Within each area, there are a set amount of stages to overcome to progress. Each stage has three different parts to it. The first standard stage is usually quite easy, the second often imposing a harder version of the same stage, usually with a par limit, then a third where the rules go absolutely out of the window.

At first, the stages just put a unique spin on one element or mechanic of the basic golf game. Top-down view and instead of hitting the ball it's throwing the putter. On some stages the golf ball is replaced with a football, knocked along rooftop mountaintops, avoiding angry kids trying to kick it off into the abyss, aiming for a football goal instead of the golf cup. Then the game switches it up, going from top-down to side on 2D, and focuses on transforming the physics of the ball. Sticky balls which cling to walls and ceilings or balls seemingly made of flubber that ricochet like crazy, and need to avoid exploding barrels to make it to the cup.

These are fun enough, but the very best of the stages come when they take their inspiration from other games. They're not all winners. Flappy Birds is never good and seeing it back here is hardly a pleasant surprise. The OG Super Mario Bros.-inspired stages are equally weak. Then the stages get real special when they look to some modern stars. There are Portal-inspired stages where a portal gun has to get a companion cube to the hole. In Super Hot-inspired stages the ball has to avoid enemies shooting at it with putter guns, with the ball able to shoot back, and time-freezing like the original. Even better there are some Super Meat Boy style stages towards the end.

So many comedy games fail at actually eliciting a single laugh from the audience, but What the Golf? consistently hits. Often just the absurdity of the WTH or WTG moments. There's no exposition or explanation to the mechanics, just the level starts and hold the button to swing and figure out what the hell is going to go on this time.

Along with the Campaign mode, there are a few other modes of play here as well. This Switch version includes a brand new Party mode. In this two players can experience a face off on a set of stages, including some completely new ones. There is a great mix that works with the two-player setup, including challenges that see the players having to work together to overcome puzzles. There's also a Daily Challenge mode that set out a few stages in a row to take on, with the total strokes count being tallied up and placed onto an online leaderboard. Similar to this there is the Impossible Challenge: the same basic premise, but with additional modifiers to make the stages significantly more difficult.