Everybody’s Golf is the twelfth game in a series that has been running since the PlayStation era, and the first since 2011’s Everybody’s Golf 6. Clap Hanz developed it with Japan Studio, Sony Interactive Entertainment published it, and it landed on PlayStation 4 in 2017. In Japan it went by New Everybody’s Golf. It is, by any measure, a golf game.
It is also a game about fishing, sky diving and driving a cart wherever you like.
Trailer, via Push Square.
The Sandbox Courses
The pitch here is simple. Everybody’s Golf keeps the shot mechanics the series is known for and opens up the space around them. Courses are built as sandboxes rather than corridors. You can free roam. You can take a golf cart off the fairway and drive it around the course, which is a small thing that changes how the whole game feels. The course stops being a set of holes and becomes a place.
Character creation and customization are in. You build a golfer, then you take that golfer online. Multiplayer is supported alongside single player, and the game runs from a third-person view with a bird’s-eye or isometric option for reading the course.
The minigames are the part that gets talked about. Fishing and sky diving sit alongside the golf. They are not the main event, and they are not trying to be. They are the game telling you it is not in a hurry.
| Mode | What you do | Where it sits |
|---|---|---|
| Single player | Play rounds, build a character | Core loop |
| Multiplayer | Play against others online | Core loop |
| Free roam | Drive a cart around the course | Sandbox layer |
| Fishing | Catch fish between rounds | Minigame |
| Sky diving | Jump from a plane | Minigame |
| Character creation | Customize your golfer | Setup |
Fishing, Sky Diving and a Cart
Genre labels put Everybody’s Golf under simulator and sport, with comedy as the theme. That is roughly right, though the comedy is in the tone rather than in jokes. The series has always been bright and loose where other golf games are stiff and serious. This entry leans further into that.
The result is a game you can play in two completely different moods. One is the round itself, where the shot system rewards practice and the courses punish a bad read. The other is the wandering, where you fish or jump out of a plane or drive a cart somewhere you have no business being. Both modes are in the same game, and neither one feels bolted on.
What the sandbox does not do is fix the parts of the series that have always been thin. Online play is here, and character creation is here, but this is not a reinvention of how the game is played. It is the same golf with more room around it.
What the Score Means
The published critical aggregate for Everybody’s Golf sits at 7.9 out of 10 across five outlets. That number is fair, and it is fair for a specific reason. This is a very good version of a game that knows exactly what it is. It is not trying to be a simulation, and it is not trying to be a party game. It is trying to be Everybody’s Golf, and it succeeds.
The gap between 7.9 and a higher score is not quality. It is ambition. The sandbox is a real addition, and the cart and the fishing and the sky diving give the game a texture the earlier entries did not have. But the core is unchanged. If you have played Everybody’s Golf 6, you know how this plays. The new material is around the edges, not at the center.
Here is what matters. The free roam and the cart are not gimmicks, because they solve a real problem with golf games. A round of golf is a series of isolated shots. You hit, you walk, you hit again. The space between shots is dead time. Everybody’s Golf fills that dead time with a world you can actually move through, and that is a genuine design answer, not a feature list.
The minigames matter less. Fishing and sky diving are pleasant and forgettable. They are the kind of thing you try once, enjoy, and then go back to the golf. That is fine. They are not the reason to buy the game.
The reason to buy the game is that it is the twelfth entry in a series that has stayed good for a long time, and it does not embarrass the ones before it. The character creation gives you a golfer worth customizing. The online play gives you people to play against. The courses are built to be wandered, and wandering them is the best new thing here.
Everybody’s Golf does not need to be more than it is. It is a sports game with a comedy theme, a simulator with a sandbox attached, and it does both jobs well enough that neither one undercuts the other. The 7.9 is not a knock. It is an accurate read of a game that chose to be excellent at what it already was instead of gambling on being something new.
If you want a golf game that takes itself seriously, look elsewhere. If you want one that lets you drive a cart into the trees and then go fishing, this is the one. The series has been doing this since the PlayStation, and the twelfth entry shows no reason to stop.
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