A visual double eagle, the GBA's first golf game barely breaks par as a single-player challenge. Fortunately, you'll get your replay kicks from an impressive slate of courses and fun multiplayer options.
Little use had been made of the ESPN license, although the logo looks nice in the screen's corner. The courses and players are all fictional.
At game's start, only one course is open in the single-player Tournament mode. Win lots of money and eventually you'll open five additional courses. You can play any open course in Stroke mode either solo or with as many as three buddies. Match Play rules are much like the PGA's annual Skins Game, with a point going to the player with the lowest score on a hole.
The 14 fictional golfers are rated according to power, control, impact (skill at hitting the ball dead-center) and spin. Willie, the default choice, is the best. The golfers' varying abilities helps make up for the game's lack of multiple difficulty levels. Choose a duffer like Shine (no kidding, that's his real name) if playing an inexperienced buddy in multiplayer mode.
ESPN Final Round uses the stroke meter of many a golf game. Press A to start your cursor moving to the left, press A again when it reaches the desired power point and establish accuracy by pressing A a third time as the cursor returns to the starting point. You can really muscle up on the ball with a Super Power shot, but expect considerable loss of accuracy. When putting, you press A only twice.
You can't change the default bag of clubs. ESPN Final Round suggests a club for each shot, but you can always rotate through your options by pressing R. Press the Control Pad left or right to change the angle of your swing. As you examine all the shot possibilities, the game automatically switches to an overhead view. A roving cursor helpfully shows where the ball will land if hit on 100 percent power.
The CPU makes a shrewd caddy. If you follow its suggestions faithfully and master the swing meter - a fairly easy proposition - you'll do well. Putting is particularly easy, with anything under 15 feet virtually a gimme. The long-term fun comes in the multiplayer modes. You can either pass a single system around or link up, in which case each player will need a Game Pak.
Brimming with lush fairways, subtly shaded greens and cobalt blue skies, ESPN Final Round is easily the prettiest hand-held golf game around. Rack up Tiger Woods-ish moolah in Tournament mode and you'll open a nighttime course that dazzles with constellations and super novas. Unless you dream of an all-cymbal radio station, though, you'll probably tire of the high-hat-heavy score. The sound effects feature more chirps and tweets than a Discovery Channel special on the common parakeet.
