Minigolf in VR sounds like a godsend at first glance, but is Cloudlands VR Minigolf passable?
That’s the question I kept asking myself during my time with Cloudlands, and the more I played the more I became frustrated with a large list of little annoyances.
Graphically the game is extremely simple, but that isn’t really a problem for a VR game. It’s simple and easy to look at, which is good for a minigolf game.
Gameplay is simple enough. You swing to hit the ball, and you teleport around either freely or directly to your ball.
However, there are a lot of issues. Often when you teleport to your ball your club hits the ball and costs you a stroke. This seems like it should have been an issue that could easily be fixed in development, but instead you end up frustrated by this issue two to three times a game.
The simple controls of the game were often times buggy as well. There would be moments where I would stand ready to hit the ball and I would swing a steady, hard swing, but instead the game would bug out right as the club came to contact with the ball. It would make a few hit sounds instead of one, and would barely tap the ball. It would sometimes do the opposite issue when trying to tap the ball too.
Using teleportation in general was also slightly problematic at times. Sometimes I play VR in a standing-only space so doing full turns is difficult to do sometimes. The game always seemed to rotate you in a strange direction in context to the course, and this caused the club to hit the ball often as well as having to move over and around the ball to face the correct direction.
The included courses ranged from basic, head-on, one or two shot courses to extremely difficult and strange mazes that slightly resembled minigolf. These
extremely difficult levels were fun at first, but they become annoying to replay as they would take over 30 strokes for par sometimes. They were also hard to navigate when you would have to be inside walls and obstacles extremely often.
The game includes a built-in course editor, and it’s extremely easy, and cool, to use. It allows you to pull building block course pieces to place in midair and connect to form your own course. It’s pretty cool to use, but most of the course you can make with it are pretty simple.
Multiplayer in the game works as well as singleplayer. I never had any connection issues but finding and adding in decent custom maps was a pain in the ass to do. The browser is as basic as it could be, and it really hurts replayability when its so hard to find new, good maps.
While the idea of joining up with friends and playing some mingolf in VR sounds entertaining at first, Cloudlands VR Minigolf set the bar a little low.
