Revisiting: Mario Golf Super Rush

 With Mario Strikers Battle League almost here, I decided to revisit the plumber's last sports-based outing on the Switch. Last time I played this game I found myself not very engaged and dropping it quickly, I found more entertainment in older titles or different sports games. I even on the podcast looked at and compared Super Rush to the counterpart on the 3DS and preferred the handheld outing over the more recent one. I did recently find myself picking this game back up to play with friends, so I am going to give this game another chance and see if my opinion as changed.

Since the game launched, we have gotten new maps and new characters which is nice, giving the game more of a complete feel, even if it made me question why some of this content was not in the base game from the start. Still I am going to start with the single player offerings and then move on to the multiplayer as the latter is the one I have spent way more time on.

Starting with the single player offerings there is a story mode, but I found myself dropping it just as I quick as I did one year ago when the game launched. I was excited for the single player offerings but the pacing is just too much of drag that I found myself becoming less and less invested as the seconds went on by. Your Mii is placed in a golf league with Mario characters and sometimes you do boss fights but it is mostly golf, pretty simple premise. But what greets the players is so much dialogue that just goes nowhere and does nothing but waste the players time, the other games had tournaments and that worked fine enough, sports games with RPG elements. This just felt like it was unimpressive and bland, the 3DS game even just had a tournament mode with a ton of challenges and I found myself way more engaged with that.

There is online and you can play all of the modes and all of the map's single player to your liking against CPUs, but I found myself dropping that option as well, the older Mario sports games, they had more charm, some fun modes that had a good mix of the sport and what we love about this series, and more engaging single player content. The courses don't have a ton of Mario flare and feels more like background elements, it wasn't until the DLC was added that some of them felt like the sport and the Mushroom Kingdom meeting. There is online and it works well enough, but now on to where I spent most of my time.

Most of the time my friends and I stuck to classic golf where everyone went at the same time, and it was a blast. Using specials to mess up your friend's golf balls, dealing with the obstacles, and just being fun, it was a great time, and that is where we spend most of our time aside from one more mode I will get into later. There also is speed golf which my friends and I did the least, as it is just who can get into the hole fastest and under par. It was just golf with one added element, and we dropped it very quickly. There was a stamina meter, but the mode just dragged, but battle golf on the other hand was a staple. The mode where everyone competes to get the most holes first, with specials, obstacles, and more, it is crazy fun. But limited because it only has two maps. It is really fun and good change of pace, I just wish there was more.

And that is the best way I can describe this package, it's fun but limited. The story mode is a drag as are most of the single player offerings, I would say only get this if you have friends who want to play with you. The most fun I had were with friends, but even then it was two of the three offerings and the one the game was based around left a lot more to be desired. This outing is fun with friends but it was a few strokes over par.