When it comes to the game of golf, we have to agree with Oscar Wilde when he claimed it was a good walk ruined.

Oscar may have changed his tune however if someone put a controller in his hands and he played the more restful videogame version.

It has to be an arcade version though, and the go to franchise since it teed off in 1997 is Everybody’s Golf.

It’s been a hot minute since the last official entry in the franchise, 2017’s Everybody’s Golf on the PS4, but the latest version is finally here.

If you’ve played any entry in the series it’s all very familiar, with returning characters and courses, with 10 courses in all and 25 unlockable characters.

You can dive into the main competition, where you naturally start off as a beginner, with the choice of two golfers. Once you’ve won enough competitions, with ten to play including two versus matches at the end, you can then move on to the next level.

It has a rather unusual, and disappointing, levelling up system, in that there isn’t one. The more you play with a particular character, the more their loyalty level, towards a caddie, increases. This doesn’t make any different to your stats however; these can be increased by eating food, some of which you win in tournaments, as well as be able to buy them from the shop. So if you want to increase your spin, you’re going to have to fill up on cupcakes.

The main game is relatively straight-forward in that if you finish first, you win.

The world tour is an accompanying mode, which will affect your status in the main game. It’s part story mode but mostly challenge, with each character having their own path to open. This involves various challenges, that vary from game to game, that certainly keep things interesting.

The intros to each game get tedious real quick, but thankfully you can skip them and jump straight into the game.

And that’s about it.

There is a section called Wacky Golf, featuring Wacky, Scramble, Survival and Boom Golf modes, but sadly none of which are all that appealing.

It’s not a big concern though as the main game is pretty meaty in itself.

The biggest challenge is that of unlocking characters and caddies, which is a real grind. You have to play a helluva lot of golf to unlock all the characters, but if that sounds too much like hard work, then maybe you shouldn’t pick up a golf game.

The actual mechanics of the game haven’t changed, with the gauge method of playing still intact. There are two available, with the gauge either at the bottom of the screen, or up the left hand side. Despite having grown up on these methods in previous versions of this franchise, we found both these versions trickier than usual; we put this down to the silly sizes of TVs these days, where your eyes have to go on quite a journey following the bar back and forth, in order to hit the perfect ball. Thankfully an advanced mode is included, which isn’t that advanced, which has a more civilised approached, where you see the club rise and tap when you want it at its most powerful for the shot you’re making, then decreasing markers around the ball that you want to hit when they’re touching the ball for the perfect strike.

This is where our main pet peeve of the game pops up. Unfortunately the game doesn’t remember what version of the power gauge you want to use, so if you chose the advanced one as we do, you have to select it every time you turn your PS5 on to play, which we’d sure would soon be a pet niggle for Wilde too.

You have the usual weather issues to keep an eye on, with wind levels being the biggest concern, but you also play at night, which could have been quite enchanting, but despite the neon ball you get it hit, it’s all a little too dark for our liking.

Although it’s been eight years since the last one in the franchise, it doesn’t feel like its evolved that much. In fact, some of the more charming elements of the last entry, which included fishing and karting, aren’t here, which is disappointing.

In fact it’s not all that different from 2021’s Easy Come, Easy Golf, from Clap Handz, who developed the franchise from 1999’s Everybody’s Golf 2 right up to the 2017 version, before Bandai Namco took over the franchise and had Hyde develop this version. It’s a version that we’d still recommend seeking out for the Switch if you’re a fan of the original franchise.

That’s not to say this one isn’t worth it though, as there’s plenty to keep you going. It just doesn’t feel particularly next gen, and it does feel like a backward step from that classic 2017 entry.

We’re certainly glad it’s back, but just wished a little more could have gone into it. A ‘Fore’ from us then, but only just.