Links: Championship Edition review

Links Championship Edition has an entirely new rendering engine with a terrain surface that includes cliffs, arches and bunker overhangs.

License: Comercialware OS: Mac OS X File size: 0K Developer: MacSoft Buy Now Price: $29.00 Updated: 03 Apr 2005

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Links Championship Edition has an entirely new rendering engine with a terrain surface that includes cliffs, arches and bunker overhangs. The ball physics also have been tuned to perfection. Trees, panoramas and golfers are now anti-aliased for seamless transitions between on-screen elements. Images have a new higher resolution (1280x1024), and the courses come alive with flying birds.

Here are some key features of "Links Championship Edition":
Create Your Own Courses with the Arnold Palmer Course Designer
Mac golfers can now re-create their home courses with the same tools used by the Links development team. Links Championship Edition features the long-awaited Arnold Palmer Course Designer (APCD). More than a toy for entry-level builders, the APCD provides users with the power and versatility to accurately re-create their home course in a powerful real-time 3-D system. Players can tweak every inch of fairway and create tunnels and arches with full control over each point on the course. A robust library of trees, shrubs and other vegetation allows players to sort for the climate and season that fit their home course, or they can import their own custom trees.
The Ball Flight is Very Real
Links Software Design Engineer Paul Johnston says: "We have maintained the legendary ball physics developed for Links LS and taught it some new tricks to deal with the more complex terrain model. Learning to ricochet the ball off a canyon wall will add to the gameplay experience. The ball physics continues to react realistically with all of the new enhancements to the terrain engine. It's hard to explain how much that adds to the experience of playing Links."
Golf with Sergio Garcia, Annika Sorenstam, Mike Weir and more
In Links Championship Edition, fourteen amazing new golfer animations are captured at the highest resolution possible. New tour players and a variety of other golfers are built with lifelike, pre-shot motions including waggle, aiming and pre-shot fidgeting. Each new golfer has a unique personality and will comment on players' games as if you were out golfing with buddies.
Play Against Your Friends Online
Links Software Design Engineer Russell Hunter Says: "We created asynchronous game play to speed up online play. People like to play other people in Links, but they don't always want to see what the other person is doing. With asynchronous game play, you play against other people online, but it's always your turn. You can see the other person's score and chat with them, so you can comment on how you are doing, without breaking your rhythm in the game. We also added the LS Tour program into Links so it will be easier to play in a LS Tour tournament."

Requirements:
Works with any Macintosh with 266MHz or faster processor, at least 64MB of RAM, and Mac OS 9 or OS X. (128 MB of RAM recommended for online multiplayer. Mac OS X version requires 128 MB of RAM.)