Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

So how could I start off saying that a game IGN gives a “Great” 8.9 to would be a disappointment? Easy. There are two things I said a while back would sell me this game as a great way to just chill out with my pals online and play some arcadey golf. Both things weren’t permitted in Hot Shots Golf Fore, the previous PS2-only iteration of the series and I felt its jump to the PS3 could be a shot at bringing in these essential features:

1. Let me unlock things when playing online as well as playing single-player.

2. Let me have voice chat while playing and in lobbies.

Guess what! Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds does NEITHER of these things. As an aside, it also doesn’t let you modify your main character with unlocked things, just your lobby avatar which given how great the characters look would probably have been an expensive problem. This doesn’t bother me that much, but you still can’t unlock new club and ball types while playing online and that really irks me. You do get USB keyboard support to chat but really it’s just not the same.

To be fair, while this is a Sony published game it is developed by Clap Hanz, so I don’t blame Sony so much for this as I do the developer. They’ve just guaranteed that not only will I not buy this game but I will very likely not even rent it. Now in the future when In-Game XMB shows up with voice chat and if this game can use it I might give it another try. At that point it might also have the added bonus of being a bargain-priced title.

“Oh no,” the developer may cry, “don’t wait to buy it until it’s a bargain game! We spent so much making it!” Then put in the blasted voice chat up front and make it a game I will actually play online with friends instead of falling asleep playing it on my own to unlock stuff, mkay?

Source: IGN Review