Luckily, Sony was more than willing to welcome us with plenty of warmth last night in an event designed expressly to show off the online functionality of the game. Those that have been following the series closely since it was released in Japan last July know that the game as it exists today was extended far beyond the stuff that originally shipped on the disc. Sony, eager to lump all the add-on and download info onto one disc for the US and European releases, is clearly taking its time to iron everything out.
In addition to a little bit of performance tweaking, Sony's also making sure the online bits are as seamless as possible. With the challenge of squaring off against fellow editors in a golf club battle royale, we jumped into the fray to see how things are coming along. The short version is that it's -- gasp, Hot Shots online! We know, we know, it's shocking.
More to the point, though: it's simultaneous Hot Shots, against everyone else, with everyone's golfers and balls represented on screen at the same time. It might sound a little hectic, and in a way it is, but there's something oddly thrilling about seeing a trio of smashed golf balls sailing in a slow arc across the fairway -- and even cooler when you see a couple people using some of the special hits like Super Draws/Fades (that's extra top/back spin). The fact that at the end of every hole you're given a running tally of who had the longest chip-ins, longest putts and longest drives means it's even more satisfying to know it was your ball that everyone watched scream in a blue blur ahead of everyone else.
But there is some order to the chaos. When you first jump online, you'll drop into a lobby (we saw two of 'em, one patterned off of an area that looks a whole lot like a top-down, cutesy version of Afrika, and another that looked like a quasi-futuristic waiting room) where your custom character -- more on that in a second -- can freely converse with other players around you, either by way of a keyboard (though sadly the number of characters is limited to short little quips), by tapping R2 to bring up the in-game keyboard (just the cell phone-style one, though, not the full shebang) or by using a bunch of pre-set catchphrases buried under a simple press of the L2 button.
From here, you can either join existing games, or create your own, setting up special rules or limits for players -- and most importantly set a time limit per hole. If players can't go from tee to cup within the limit, they're booted out of the game. It's actually a rather neat system, and on the off chance that everyone finishes early, a countdown timer will kick off, allowing everyone to get in little bits of trash talk before moving on to the next hole.
It's actually a surprisingly well thought-out system; mainly because you can actually see a bunch of cartoony characters crushing shots onto the green, and then everyone putting toward the hole en masse. It's simultaneously thrilling and a little crushing to watch someone bounce out or have just a bit too much oomph on a ball that they zip right around the hole. Seeing four or five shots blow by, circle around, drop right into and juuuuuust miss the cup really does make the games feel more interactive -- not to mention rewarding when everyone watches your 30 foot miracle putt drop right in front of their faces.
But the characters you see on the course aren't quite the ones you'll meet in the waiting rooms. Hot Shots Golf's little avatars bear more than a passing resemblance to Miis; the super-deformed bodies, huge heads, little ball hands and propensity for emoting (all four directions on the right analog stick let you shout, wave, dance and express love) eschew the detail of the main golfers for more expressive, simple designs. Actually creating them is, again, rather Mii-like. You'll pick out their garb, toss on facial options like hair and expressions and work from a handful of pre-assembled bits and pieces that best encapsulate your inner ultra-cute golfer persona.
With support for up to 50 players in pre-assembled tournaments that allow you set up a proper tee time for everything to go down, plus the ability to hop into a game with anyone in the lobbies, plus rampant stat tracking for best gains in distance, overall hole scores and the promise of new downloadable content like clubs and caddies, it's looking increasingly like the wait us poor golf-obsessed PS3 owners outside of Japan have had to endure is going to be well worth it.