The Links name may not be familiar to the more ‘console orientated’ gamers amongst us but even if you haven’t played it, chances are you have heard of the Links series. Starting off many years ago by Access Software who were brought out my Microsoft, Links has been refined and enhanced to become the best golf game on PC and has finally made its overdue debut on the Xbox. Because of the differences between PC and consoles a few adjustments have been made to the controls which bring it more inline with the Tiger Woods golf games from EA and to the credit of the developers what they’ve done works great! Links is an instantly accessible, yet hard to master game that sucks you in and has that ‘one more go’ factor missing from a lot of games.

Using the familiar ‘power meter’ swing style the controls have a nice fluid feel that never make you think that you’re anything less but totally in control. They are nice and responsive and pretty much perfect. After a tee off if your ball slices off into the rough or out of bounds, it’s you that’s made the mistake and as with any game, practice makes perfect. You are never fighting the game at any stage and the controls are all about smooth, rhythmic swings instead of ‘click, click, click’. If you’re familiar with Tiger Woods then you’ll pick this up in minutes (though you might miss the after shot spin control) but even then, one lapse in concentration during a game and you can find yourself dropping a few shots pretty easily. It might sound pretty easy if you think that to make accurate shots all you need to do is move the left stick down and up in a straight line but get the swing wrong even just a fraction and you will slice or hook the ball.

When selecting your shot you hit ‘A’ to zoom up to the hole to take a closer look. You then check out the wind indicator and adjust your aim accordingly. Clubs are selected with the L and R triggers and the right analog stick controls the amount of spin you want to put on the ball. For some reason though with the spin control, it appears you can only put back spin on the ball which is a bad oversight in my opinion as it makes it impossible to put top spin on any shots! Pressing 'B' brings up the Shot Type Gizmo which lets you select from any of the 6 shot types, straight, blast, chip, punch, flop and putt. You may want to take a putt from the edge of the green instead of a chip and this makes it easier to take exact control over what you want to do. Pressing the black button gives you total manual control over the camera and you can fly around the current hole to take in the magnificent scenery or get a closer look at your player. This mode really shows off the awesome looking courses that are filled with swaying trees, great looking water, rocks, bunkers and grass.

All the artwork is of a very high quality with bump mapping creating very realistic looking environments. The 9 courses in Links 2004 all look fantastic and feature greatly from all being from very different places around the world. 9 courses may not sound like a lot, especially as TW2004 has 19 but this is the first Links game for Xbox and the course total will hopefully be expanded upon each year. There is also the promise of courses becoming available for download over Xbox Live so I can’t wait to see what becomes available.

The players themselves are detailed but suffer from a slightly awkward looking appearance. Some of the characters suffer from skinny legs, bodies and funny looking shoulders and while not awful looking do suffer from this a bit. From behind they all look great, it’s just during some of the cut scenes that this becomes noticeable. The animations for the most part are all smooth and fluid but there are also a few instances where maybe they don’t blend into each other as well as they could. There is a nice character editor that lets you pick a player and edit his clothing, appearance, skin colour, glove, shoes as well as clubs but after using the excellent character editor in Top Spin Tennis the one in Links feels pretty basic and was disappointing, especially when you want your player to look truly unique when you take him/her online.

The A.I in Links 2004 for the most part is invisible. During the normal tournament matches you play by yourself and view the scoreboard after each hole to check on the progress of the other players. During the Skins matches however some pretty bad A.I becomes very noticeable. I’ve been playing through the Links 2004 career mode and at the end of some Tournaments you have to take part in a Skins game against other players. Unlike in the tournaments prior, you have to watch the A.I golfers and wait for them to take their shots and this is where the bad A.I becomes noticeable. A lot of the time they follow each other around the course, hit the exact same shots and manage to land their shots within a few feet of each other the majority of the time. I’ve seen loads of examples of my 2 opponents making rubbish approach shots and landing in the rough to only then chip in from behind an audience stand or some other obstacle. This negated my great shots and tied up the hole each time and was frustrating to say the least and I was expecting to see each player tackle the course in their own way. I was really surprised to see this as it happens in every Skin game against the A.I and would have been evident early on in the games testing phase. We can only hope an upgrade addresses this glaring problem.

The games sound is full of nice ambient sound effects. The courses feature a variety of wildlife and the sounds of birds, wind and trees rustling in the breeze. The music is a mix of generic guitar/rock and luckily custom soundtracks are allowed. The commentary is unfortunately average as well and for the most part is pretty flat suffering from the old ‘tonal’ differences mid sentence as it puts the commentary together from separate sound samples. The commentary seems to make a few mistakes as well such as getting the names and scores wrong and overall it could have done with more work. It doesn’t get repetitive as quickly as a lot of other games but could have been much better. The crowd noises are another area that lets the game down as well. They sometimes applause through the tee shots when in real life they would have been told to be quiet before the golfer takes his/her swing. Overall the ambient sounds are really very nice and the music in the game quite good but it’s let down by the commentary and crowd.

It’s great to see another game compatible with XSN sports and the multiplayer and Xbox Live options in Links 2004 definitely give it an edge over Tiger Woods. With full system link support for your next Xbox Lan party as well as all the normal Xbox Live features, Links 2004 is worth picking up if you’re keen to play some golf online against friends. The games we played were lag free and a lot of fun. A great feature in multiplayer is the “Fast Play” mode, all the golfers play at the same time instead of taking turns and games can be completed much faster. Fast Play is a great option and makes it possible to have games without spending hours on just one game. Links also features full XSN compatibility so you can also setup your own tournaments and invite your friends to play.