Links Extreme

Computer golf sims have a tradition of being fairly sterile. Beyond the intensely mathematical details of how the ball flies, bounces, and rolls, the links themselves are usually only shown at their very best. Perfect fairways, roughs that look anything but rough, the stripes of the green being so straight as to be mechanically wallpapered. Not a single divot to be found, even on the worst swings possible. No lie is bad enough to ever dirty your onscreen golfer's khakis, and definitely never bad enough to need to put down a towel about it. Rare indeed is the golf game that ever elects to get down and dirty, and cover all the grimy, frustrating messes, the parts of the sport that the PGA would never want to show.

How extreme is "Extreme"?

Surely enough, those kinds of games do exist, often played for laughs, presented as "golf for people who don't like golf." Outlaw Golf, for example, tries to make golf more radical, more fringe, by offering female golfers in provocative clothing, male golfers dressed like Fred Durst wannabes (even in the immediate aftermath of Y2K, pop culture found those types embarrassing enough to mock), courses set in areas where there really should not be courses (like under L-train tracks or on frozen glaciers), applying a heaping helping of sarcastic commentary and a little sprinkling of blatant violence. Beavis & Butt-Head: Bunghole in One sets MTV's duo of clueless ne'er-do-wells (and the small cast of supporting characters) upon a series of miniature-golf holes set in locations from the TV show, putting around their filthy living room, the grease-encrusted Burger World, or a rusty old junk yard, while making irreverent jokes about balls and other things. It could be argued that neither of these games was made out of genuine love for the game of golf, but if one genuinely loved golf, what would they even do to make it appeal to non-golfers? And would it work?

From the setup program of a different Links game.

It is hard to say what decisions lead to the creation of Links Extreme. What I can say for sure is that it was one of the first Links games released after Access Software's acquisition by Microsoft (after several years of them collaborating on the Links-based Microsoft Golf games). Microsoft were certainly pushing a more extreme image for themselves at the time, with their larger-selling successes being the likes of Monster Truck Madness, Motocross Madness, Midtown Madness, a lot of in-your-face sports-action games with "Madness" in the title.

So Radical and Edgy, the camera can barely keep in focus.

So maybe Links Extreme was their effort to bring golf under that same vibe, and capitalize on the burgeoning popularity of Extreme Sports. Its underpinnings are a variation on the Links LS codebase from between 1998 and 1999, so the game is 100% Windows-native, supports high resolutions (up to a point), online play, and so on. What on Earth makes Links Extreme so Extreme? Golf-cart peel-outs? Whacking large divots in the tee box and not filling them in? Did Bobcat Goldthwait come back from Links 386 CD? Well, aside from the magazine ads and the live-action intro movie, none of these things actually happen in game. Links Extreme offers a few alternative game modes to instill a bit more violence and merry-making into the sport… to varying degrees of success.

The ten available golfers range from existing Links players Mike and Ryan, to several children, and one man right out of the trenches.

The first of these modes, and probably the one I'd be most likely to play again (ever), is the Demolition Driving Range. This is an arcade-style minigame set on a wide-open desert plain, where a series of whimsical pop-up targets appear down range, and your task is to hit those targets with exploding golf balls. The targets range from cows, blimps, and a large animated cowboy sign, to "those annoying slow players ahead of you" (often seen breaking their clubs, slapping their caddies, and yelling things like "This isn't golf, it's the friggin' Three Stooges!"). The driving range is full of opportunities to build up score multipliers through consecutive hits, and lots of bonus balls to keep playing indefinitely if you're good enough.

Lining up a shot on two unsuspecting slowbies.

You can play the driving range with any of the game's multiple swing gauge settings; Extreme even inherits Links LS 1999's new PowerStroke analog mouse swing as an option, but trying to play the driving range with it is madness and folly. Two- and three-click swings are also available, but it takes enough time for the swing meter to fill and empty that you may very well miss your chance to hit a given target by the time you've aimed and clicked through it. Exclusive to the driving range is a Kwik Swing button, where you need only click where on the range you want your ball to go (and optionally adjust how much lift the ball should get, to hit those high-flying blimps and airplanes) and then click the Swing button, and the game takes care of the rest for you. Lest you feel that this makes the minigame too easy, the Driving Range is parted out into no less than eight separate high-score boards, two for each swing type (and divided between with and without time limit).

Stick around the tee on the first hole at Mojo Bay and the guy on the porch will sing you a song.

If you are more interested in actually playing golf than partaking in such mini-game hijinks, you are offered four different modes of play, on two wild exclusive courses. In Extreme Golf, you are offered a selection of balls with special powers, either beneficial to your own shots, or malicious "prank" balls that you can choose to slap on your opponents. These balls can be set to a limited supply per player, or unlimited for golf with no boundaries. You get balls that simply drop out of the sky as soon as they reach your aiming marker, "pin seekers" that will turn around and home in on the hole should they fly past it, "ghost" balls that go through trees and other obstacles, or even "rocket" balls that can fly upwards of 400 yards off the tee. On the other hand, balls that aren't as beneficial include balls that glue in place as soon as they touch the ground, "worm-burners" that don't fly at all and just skid to a halt on the ground, balls that suddenly bank hard-left or hard-right mid-flight, ultra-bouncy balls, or "mega-backspin" balls that will roll backwards almost all the way back where they started. But just because you're using one of your balls doesn't mean it'll have any effect; if you don't nail the impact on your swing (either the bottom of the 3-click swing meter, or clicking the mouse at the right moment in PowerStroke), your ball just won't do anything. Conversely, if you're trying to prank somebody, your prank won't fire off unless they miss their impact. In practice, Extreme Golf's primary appeal is the initial novelty of "I wonder what this ball does?" Once you've goofed around with them for a few holes, there's not much left to it.

Lining up an artillery strike at Dimension X in Deathmatch mode, as the Red Baron surveys from above.

Poison and Deathmatch modes are listed separately, but are not terribly different in practice. Here, your balls have the option of being explosive, with the goal being to either hole out before the other guy (like typical Match Play), or to eliminate them. Both modes give you an arsenal of various types of explosives with varying ranges and blast radii, but in Poison, only the player(s) that are not in last-place can use them, with oddly bureaucratic rules for who does and does not get to keep playing. In Deathmatch, victory is awarded to the last golfer standing (or whoever holes out) - except that you won't be killing players in one well-placed mortar shell off the tee, because the golfers have so much health by default that it will take multiple such shots to confirm your kill. In practice, Deathmatch mode is like a three-dimensional Scorched Earth, where hitting normal golf balls is useful to relocate yourself around the course and, hopefully, to a more advantageous location to dispense bombs. If all of this sounds like too much of a pain and you'd like to just play a (relatively) normal round of golf, Stroke Play is also an option, removing all prank balls and explosives. At which point, why would you still want to play Links Extreme?

A relatively long Par 3 across the bay. Watch out for gators.

The answer, then, is in the game's two included courses. Rather than take a Devil's Course-like approach by including hellishly difficult golf holes that defy physics, the two courses here opt to take on a more extreme set dressing. In Mojo Bay, you golf through the swamp lands near New Orleans at dusk, driving and chipping past old cabins with banjo-plucking grandpappies sitting on the porch, assorted zombies wandering the grounds, and top-hat-wearing talking skulls as tee markers that occasionally pop out of the ground to comment on how you're playing. Past that, despite the unusually large amount of water hazards, Mojo Bay is the closest Links Extreme gets to having a normal golf course.

Saluting your opponent as your Howitzer is still in the air might be jumping the gun a bit.

On the other hand, you have Dimension X, a Great War-era no man's land, pockmarked with craters, half-dug trenches, and the ruins of old barn houses, topped off by the blaze of an eternal sunset overlooking all proceedings. Dimension X is a lot more spread-out, and isn't quite as clear about which direction you need to be golfing (beyond "forward"), strongly reminiscent of the first hole of the Old Course at St. Andrews in being one big open field with a few hazards dotted around. Dimension X is intended for use with Deathmatch mode, granting players plenty of places to take cover (possibly the only reason you'd ever want to hit into the sand trap on purpose).

No complications here, just make the putt. Ignore the hellish moaning of the undead on the fairway behind you.

Such an examination of Links Extreme overall leads one to believe that, perhaps, Links Extreme's audience isn't "non-golfers," because frankly, if you don't already like golf, this game is really not going to change your mind. Maybe, then, the design concept here seeks to approach the problem the other way around, providing people who already like Links with a game that will let them loosen up, and change their way of thinking. But in my opinion, Links Extreme does not particularly succeed at either one. Its sole saving grace is the Demolition Driving Range; fun as that is, though, it strikes me as an office-toy kind of mini-game, the likes of which you would buy off the bargain rack while you're picking up a fresh ream of copy paper and a box of Sweet-N-Lows for the break room. And perhaps that was Microsoft's plan for it all along, with an introductory price of $25.99 (roughly, $14 cheaper than that year's edition of Links LS).

"Looks like yer outta balls, pardner!"

Really, it's a less embarrassing thing to get caught playing by your boss than, say, Beavis & Butt-Head would have been. And historically, it exists as a bizarre footnote in the timeline of what was the most respected computer golf series there ever was.

And here is some commentary-free footage I recorded about eight years ago.