N-Philes

Pangya: Fantasy Golf PSP Impressions

Posted June 9th 2009 by Adam Glasgow.

Tomy is publishing a number of games this year, most of them being Naruto branded, all of which sport humorously long names like Shonen Jump Naruto Shippuden: Ninja Council 4 (DS). If you're a Naruto fanatic, chances are you'll be giving Tomy your money in the near future. What I'm most interested in, though, is the PSP game Pangya: Fantasy Golf. Hit the break for my impressions.

Pangya (which used to be known as Albatross 18 here in the states) is a free to play, pay for extra content, online golf game for the PC developed in Korea. The characters are wacky, the items are wacky, the courses are somewhat wacky, but the physics are fairly traditional, save for some special shots. I played and greatly enjoyed Pangya for a long while, and still play it casually. There were even Wii versions of the game, known as Super Swing Golf and Super Swing Golf: Season 2. On June 23^rd, Tomy is releasing the PSP version.

Golf games are great portable games. They're easy to pick up and put down – play a few holes, or play a few courses, passively or intensely. They're easy to learn, but difficult to master. For these reasons, along with my weird lifelong pseudo obsession with golf, I've sank an unspeakable number of hours into portable golf games, mainly Mario Golf: Advance Tour on the GBA and Hot Shots: Open Tee for the PSP. I jumped on the opportunity to take a look at Pangya PSP at E3, and things are looking good.

Visually the game is solid and looks almost identical to its PC counterpart. Luckily it's more than a port, though, and comes fully equipped with a story mode (which the PC doesn't have), 18 playable characters (including a polar bear), 9 courses, and a ridiculous amount of unlockable content like clubs, clothes, and accessories. It seems to be an even more flushed out, full game than the online version, almost surely because it has to stand alone as a single player experience as opposed to being able to rely on the massive multi-player aspect to keep things interesting. Fantasy Golf might not be online, but it at least does support Ad Hoc multi-player for up to 8 players.

It plays more or less like most golf video games – you have a power bar at the bottom of the screen and you control your shot by timed button presses. You can cut or slice and add front or back spin with the analog nub. It's hard to say if the timings were more or less forgiving than the PC version, or how the difficulty compares to other golf games on the market, given my limited amount of time with the game.

After years of being on the market, the PSP is becoming a very hard system for me to ignore. And with the impending release of what looks to be another very polished golf game on the platform, it's easy to see myself caving in and getting my hands on the platform again very soon. Color me more than a little interested in this game.

Tags: Pangya, PSP, E3-09

Posted in: News, Gaming

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