Golf Cart Ranger Review

Golf Cart Ranger is a great looking little game for the iOS devices. It promises simple gameplay with a friendly, golf cart approach and a native control scheme that should deliver easy control. The premise is straightforward: drive a cart over a driving range and pick up balls while avoiding obstructions and snagging fuel.

But then that’s it. The game doesn’t really evolve too much from the onset. Courses get stranger, but the initial principles remain throughout the entire experience. Great games based on simple mechanics should dynamically change over the course of the experience. The core gameplay should remain in place, of course, but the game should add layers of creativity and difficulty as it moves along.

The control scheme is simple. The cart automatically moves and players touch the right or left side of their device in order to turn. It would have been nice to see some form of til control, but it’s understandable that this may have been tough to achieve. The game takes on a top-down perspective, so rotating through tilt may have wound up disorienting.

This package has 36 levels to start, with the option to buy more once in the game. Within the 36 levels are three different course types. But, really, it all comes down to picking up balls with a golf cart. The charm is high for the first few tries... then it settles into monotonous. And the monotony degrades into being downright boring. That’s this game’s fatal flaw; beyond some nice leaderboards and a simple presence, there’s nothing here to attract addiction.

That all said, this game does deliver a strong visual display. Golf Cart Ranger packs clean, sharp graphics. The textures are a bit muddy, but the rich color scheme makes up for it. The gopher on the title screen art is present, but he’s really just about the only “cute” portion of the title.

The game is on sale right now, during its time of release, so it may be worth the $0.99 entry price. Once it hits $2? How much can one person love driving over little white dots?