Any time a new in the Hot Shots Golf series is announced, it immediately jumps onto my personal "must have" list for a number of reasons. Kicking back after a long day of work and playing a few solid, relaxing rounds of golf is almost therapeutic. The pleasantly happy style, calming environments, ambient sounds and background tunes of Hot Shots Golf just puts me in a great state of mind. The series has always had such an effect on me, and especially now moving onto the next-generation version, it is still just as capable.

Hot Shots Golf may have a candy coated, cartoon-like veneer but it plays an extremely solid, realistic game of golf. Even though the gameplay has remained essentially the same for years, it's also still the best playing of all golf titles in my opinion. The series has relied on the triple click method from the beginning, which still works perfectly fine. For Out of Bounds, ClapHanz went back to the drawing board and came up with a new "Advanced" type of swing as an optional (but ultimately preferred) swing method. The new swing type requires you pay close attention to the actual swing of your club and then the contact with the ball, as opposed to just timing presses on an on-screen meter. Like real golf, it adds some guesswork when it comes to distance, and provides less information in terms of exactly how hard to swing as compared to the "Traditional" method. There's basically less hand-holding involved. As a tradeoff, your swing will have more power behind it (around 15 yards or so), and it's more difficult to accidently shank a shot. The game definitely encourages you to try this new shot type, and once you do and realize the benefits, it's hard to go back. Fine tuning your shots is definitely more of a challenge at first, although once you become comfortable with the timing, expect your game to improve greatly. All of the little quirks and special shots, such as super backspins, homing shots and power shots and whatnot have returned in Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds. The character loyalty meter originally introduced in the PSP Hot Shots Golf has also been brought over to the PS3 version, so the longer you stick with a character, the better they become. For those HSG fans that couldn't stand the westernized versions of the characters in previous titles, there's no need to worry any longer. The Japanese-designed characters have been brought over fully untouched.

Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds is a very pretty looking game. It's both colorful and pleasing to the eye, though not exactly what you'd consider "next-generation" demo material. The game has does have a soft, ethereal image quality about it that's hard to describe. The motley crew of big-headed characters are nicely rendered and animated, and almost have a anime "living doll" look to them. The courses are distinct and rather large, and for the first time in the series you can even play over to an adjacent hole as shortcut of sorts. The environments are well populated with ambient animations and details, including a gallery of onlookers, insects and families of various creatures, foliage and debris which react to the wind, and a large variety of weather condition, lighting and time of day effects. The texture work on the courses are really quite nice, and there appears to be some sort of anisotropic filtering applied to textures which gives them a nice high quality look without the obvious transition to lower quality ones at a distance. Out of Bounds does have some jaggy/shimmer issues here and there, seen mostly on moving foliage and trees, though I find that the good outweighs the bad. After a few games the subtle beauty wins out.

To go along with the relaxing nature of Hot Shots Golf is a cacophony of environmental sound effects to go along with the animation and details. Depending on the course and hole, you'll be treated to the trickle of a nearby creek, the distant calls of a herd of elephants, variable amounts of wind blowing through trees and grass, bystanders casually chatting among themselves or commenting on the action, amongst other audio details. As always, there is also a soothing selection of background music tied in with each specific course's theme, which can be turned off if so inclined. The character voices have obviously been redone in English, and they all sound perfectly fine. If you had no issues with the voices in Hot Shots Golf Fore! or Open Tee, then you'll have no problems here. The various sound effects are nice and crisp, and the satisfyingly clean snap of the club when making perfect contact is music to the ears.

The Japanese version of Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds was a kind of work-in-progress when it launched last year. Since then they added more functionality and have even begun to offer downloadable content. The North American version is "up to par" so to speak with the Japanese version at this time, and SCEA promises quite a few new updates and addition are in the works, including characters, courses, game modes and others. What is included out of the box isn't bad, though it is just a little lacking in terms of character customization and modes. The obvious Practice/Training and customizable Stroke/Match Play modes are present along with a multiplayer VS Mode and the real core of the single player game, the Tournament Mode. Tournament Mode starts you off with two beginner characters and a single course and has you work through a variety of mini-tournaments and matches in an effort to unlock items, courses and other characters, level up your characters and skills, and rank up in an effort to be the #1 player. The setup should sound very familiar to fans of the series, though the mode is actually simpler than what was found in the previous two Hot Shots Golf titles. Instead of a "store" or clubhouse to visit after each challenge, you simply pick a random card out of six, which unlocks something random, whether it is a new club, online accessory, caddy or outfit. Ranking up also yields some new items on occasion as well. There's no way to customize your characters besides the unlocked pre-defined outfits, like in Open Tee, for example. The challenges, also, are all a little too similar. They take place in matches against newer (and better playing) characters, on newly unlocked courses or layouts with increasing levels of difficulty and occasional "special rules" but they more often than not feel the same. The special rules, such as requiring a certain character, +2 if you hit a tree or rough, or playing with greens with big, oversize cups adds variety at first, until you've played the same type a few times. Within a tournament tier, you end up playing several of these challenges and then finally a VS. match against a new character in order to move up to the next tier. I would have liked to see a greater variety of challenges within the mode and even maybe some mini-game types added into the mix to break it up. As it stands, Out of Bounds has 15 characters and 6 courses, and the Tournament Mode should keep most anyone busy for a while. An extra course or character or two wouldn't have hurt.

Thankfully, Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds has a really robust and addictive online mode to fall back on if you get bored of the single player modes. Fore! had some interesting online play and OoB essentially builds on that. When you log in you are treated to cute, virtual world type place with little customizable avatars representing yourself and the various players. There are a number of lobbies, all with distinct looks, from a standard clubhouse to a dusty, outdoor desert environment. There you can meet up with players to join pre-scheduled tournaments, create/join custom matches with others, or just hang out and chat and play around. The avatars are controlled as if they are in a game of some type, and can run around at will, jump, sit down, slide down stair banisters and perform other actions. It's visually simple, but a very clever distraction and almost like a golf themed, "PlayStation Home Lite". As for online game modes, the custom games can support up to 8 players simultaneously (with everyone visually playing at the same time), and the tournaments can involve up to 50. In terms of communication, you can text chat with others using pre-defined macros, on-screen text entry or a USB or Bluetooth keyboard. Chat is available within the lobbies and between holes while playing a match, and is limited to only a few words at a time. There is no voice communication at all, which again, would have been a nice option at least. The online experience is always smooth and lag free even with all sorts of players chatting, playing and such. A really nice twist to the online play is that all of the progress you've made in the single player Tournaments, including unlocked characters and accessories, is reflected in your online games (depending on the mode/game type). From the lobby system to the actual online games, Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds is really well put together in terms of online functionality, and seriously addicting. Sony has stated that they expect to expand on the functionality in future game updates, which are apparently coming relatively soon.

I've played every single iteration of Hot Shots Golf and I'm not even close to being tired of it yet. Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds is a worthy new addition to the series even if it's missing a few minor elements out of the box. With a good amount of single player content, really solid, tried-and-true gameplay, and an extremely playable online multiplayer mode, it'll be difficult to put the game down any time soon.