I decided to check out 3D Ultra Minigolf Adventures despite the fact the last golf game I played, Tiger Woods 07, had me swearing like a sailor (no offense to any sailors reading this). Fortunately, they kept the controls nice and simple. All you have to control is the angle of the hit and the power. There are three different controls schemes to choose from. Each with a different method for control. First, you can control it Tiger Woods style with the right stick. Pull it back to set the power and push forward to swing. The other two methods both use the A button. With the “Three Hits” method you hit the A button to start the power level going up. Hit it again to choose the power level, and then hit the A button a final time to adjust the shot angle. The final control scheme is the “Hold” method. You hold the A button until the power level is where you want it. Then just release it to hit. All three methods use the left thumb stick to choose the angle of the shot. I found the Hold method to be easiest to use, but I did not have too much trouble with the Tiger Woods method. The Three Hits method was a bit harder to use because you have to be accurate with your clicking to hit it strait.

The game offers both single player and multiplayer games. Playing the single player matches feels a lot like practice for playing in the multiplayer mode because you never see any other players. However, it will take quite a bit of practice to be able to get par on any of the three courses so that is not necessarily a bad thing. One of the better aspects of multiplayer, besides the opportunities trash talking, is the powerups. You can use them to knock your opponents balls of the course giving yourself an advantage. Just watch out for their revenge attacks.

In addition to playing the 36 included holes you can make your own with the included hole designer. The created holes can be played locally or over Xbox Live. There are a lot of options for what you can put into the custom holes making for some interesting shots.

3D Ultra Minigolf Adventures has four separate characters you can play with, but there is no benefit to using any of them. They all play exactly the same. This would have been a perfect game for using the vision camera to face map. Given the online play, it would have been really cool to see your friends faces as you play them online instead of always seeing the same 4 pre-made characters.

The Achievements for 3D Ultra Minigolf Adventures are going to take some practice. A couple of them you get just for playing the game’s course, but most of them are for getting certain scores. Getting 4 or 5 under par is probably doable after a few rounds, but 12 under par is going to be brutally difficult to get. If you’re looking for some quick points this is not the game to try.

While the game is pretty fun it does have a couple issues. First, the Power Meter is very touchy. Hitting the ball with the power level near the top of the green portion hits the ball like 2 feet, but just barely in yellow portion of the power meter and you hit the ball around 10 feet. Don’t even bother hitting the ball with the power meter in the red section because it will go out of bounds. After a few rounds you get use to it, but it makes it hard to get actuate distance shots. My other complaint is that there is no way to move around and see the entire hole before you hit the ball. I know I’m spoiled from playing Tiger Woods with all the options it provides, but you can only zoom in and out and tilt the angle of the camera. The camera always stays behind/above your golfer. This makes it difficult to score well without playing through each course a few times to memorize the holes.

I like to judge the value of an Xbox Live Arcade game by how long I will play it verse the price. At 800 points, $10, 3D Ultra Minigolf Adventures is worth the money if you expect to be playing it online with your friends. After a few rounds the single player gets a tad boring playing alone, but with the option to make your own holes you always have the ability to try new things. Overall a decent addition to Xbox Live Arcade.