Turbo Golf Racing on Xbox Game Preview is a mess. There unfortunately is no other way to put it. I’ve been excited for the game since developer Hugecalf Studios first announced it. I like Rocket League and Mario Kart, So naturally a game which became a hybrid of the 2 peaked my interests. Since I also enjoyed golf, I figured I couldn’t go wrong with a game that included all 3. Unfortunately, I was wrong.
Turbo Golf Racing is essentially Rocket League set on a golf course with added perks and bonuses you could place on your car similar to Mario Kart. You can get missiles, Turbo boosts et cetera all in the same fashion. There are also permanent power-ups called cores which you can place on your car to give you a passive, permanent increase until you switch it out for another one. Unfortunately, we were unable to access any of this in our time playing due to how broken the feature was.
We were fortunate to receive a early access code for the game for a few days prior to release. Only the single player option was available as nobody was in the multiplayer lobby as the game had not yet released. There are 3 levels available to you from the outset in the single player mode. In these levels, you are tasked with gaining anywhere from 1 to 3 stars based on the score you get and will need a certain amount of stars to keep unlocking additional levels. You earn points by completing the levels in a faster time as well as knocking your golf ball through various hoops which are positioned at different heights and locations throughout the level.
The premise is exciting, but the vehicle controls and level setup make it almost impossible to play correctly. Your vehicles take wide, over arching turns at a speed so slow regardless of how fast you are traveling before you begin to turn. The controls are incredibly sensitive even on the lowest setting. I was forced to keep my sensitivity for turning all the way at the bottom, yet still would nearly rocket off the course at the slightest touch of the navigation stick.
The course barriers were also a huge problem. There are parts of levels which allow you to knock the ball off the course and out of bounds. The result is you respawn a short amount of distance back with the ball and have to keep going. Some of the levels don’t have this, and instead have an invisible barrier which knocks the ball back into the course. The only issue though is that there is no indication of what parts have the barrier and what parts don’t, so it’s impossible to know whether you can take a shortcut to another part of the course or just get ricocheted back. When this does happen, the ridiculous control scheme sees you have to backtrack so much that nearly all progress is lost. The only “benefit” of this is that it impacts all players, so everyone has the same disadvantage. Some form of translucent wall to allow players the ability to see the difference should be included, and I couldn’t believe it wasn’t there.
We were not met with any day one updates once the multiplayer lobbies opened up. Online games consist of eight players in a race to get their golf ball into the hole first with the most points. There are eight rings along the course you receive points for striking your ball through. Unfortunately, the game was so broken and control scheme so messed up that it was nearly impossible to hit any of them.
Turbo Golf Racing is available on Xbox Game Pass now and is in Game Preview. I highly suggest waiting until an update hits or the game goes into full release prior to trying. With the amount of bugs and issues with this game right now, it is simply unplayable.
