Product description
-------------------
Packaging : In a Sleeve
The Best-Selling Golf Sim of all Time Links LS Classic is the
best value in PC golf. Play realistic golf at your PC with Arnold
Palmer and 11 other amateur golfers. Choose from 35 different
modes of play, including stroke, match play, and skins, or set up
your own tournament and compete like the pros!
Benefits:
"Best Sports Game of the Year 2000" - Links LS Classic delivers
photo-realistic graphics, accurate ball physics, and
championship-caliber courses, all based on 2000's best-selling
golf sim Links LS 2000. Authentic game play - Delivers
photorealistic graphics, accurate ball physics, and
championship-caliber courses, all based on the best-selling golf
sim, Links LS 2000. The most courses - Includes 21 courses - more
than any other golf game!
Standard Features:
The Most Courses Includes 21 championship courses - more than any
other golf game! Take your pick between such favorites as the
historical St. Andrews Old Course, the picturesque Banff Springs,
or the challenging fantasy course Devil's Island.
Authentic Graphics & Gameplay Links LS Classic delivers
photo-realistic graphics, accurate ball physics, and
championship-caliber courses, all based on the best-selling golf
sim -- Links LS 2000.
Thirty-Five Modes of Play Choose from 35 different modes of play
so you can play the same games you play on the real course,
including stroke, match play, and skins. Set up your own
tournament and compete like the pros with galleries of thousands
cheering your best s.
Twelve Golfer Animations Be the golfer of your choice with 12
different golfer animations, including Arnold Palmer.
Golf Made Easy Links LS Classic features the commentary of CBS
Golf Analyst David Feherty.
Color Commentary Links LS Classic features the commentary of CBS
Golf Analyst David Feherty.
System Requirements:
* Processor: Pentium 150 MHz CPU
.com
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Microsoft Links LS 2000 is the newest edition of the all-time
bestselling golf simulation. More than seventeen years of passion
and precision have evolved into LS 2000--the most realistic golf
experience possible on the PC.
The ball physics of Links LS are so accurate, you can adjust
your stance, club-face angle, and swing plane to set up a
high-arching wedge that will actually back up on the green,
just as it would on a real course! Links LS immerses you in a
tournament environment with galleries of thousands to cheer your
best s.
Links LS supports more than twenty-five of the world's greatest
championship and resort courses (sold separately). New courses
are re-created regularly to extend your desktop golf experience.
Links LS includes multimedia tours of St Andrews, Covered Bridge,
Hapuna, and Mauna Kea. In-depth multimedia interviews get you
acquainted with the legend himself--Arnold Palmer.
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Review
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Apparently all the commotion over the antitrust lawsuit kept
some of Microsoft's packaging staff from staying completely
focused on their jobs the last couple of months. How else do you
explain seeing a box that says "Links LS 2000" on the outside,
but has Links LS 1999 on the inside?
OK, I'll admit I might be exaggerating. Just so I don't get sued,
I'll say this up front: Links LS 2000 is indeed a different game
from its predecessor. But its additional features are so
unimpressive both in quantity and quality that there's simply not
much reason for owners of the previous version to get excited. In
fact, Links LS 2000 feels more like an add-on course bundle than
anything else, though five courses for around $40 (after the
rebate) is admittedly a pretty good deal.
Two of the five new courses are from St. Andrews, the New and
Jubilee Courses (the Old Course was already available to Links LS
owners). The other three include two from Hawaii (Hapuna and
Mauna Kea) and Covered Bridge in Indiana. Though the three
locations are definitely unique in appearance and in the
challenges they offer, this variety can't quite match PGA
Championship Golf's array of eight courses. Furthermore, the LS
2000 graphics engine looks to be the spitting image of LS 1999
(which was an awful lot like 1998); about the only major
difference is an option that lets you choose a "skyscape" - which
basically means you can set how cloudy it is when you play.
Of course, the graphics in the Links LS series have usually been
highly regarded by fans, so it's not that much of a slam to say
things haven't changed between this version and the one before.
But compared with the beautifully rendered 3D landscapes of PGA
Championship Golf or Jack Nicklaus 6, the digitized images of LS
2000 are starting to look dated even at a high resolution.
There's just not much sense of depth when you're standing at the
tee looking down the fairway - it simply looks like a photo and
doesn't feel like a golf course.
Aside from the courses, about the only other additions as far as
offline play goes are a scant four additional golfer animations
and commentary from CBS golf analyst David Feherty and CBS sports
announcer Craig Bolerjack. The golfer animations are fine - Fuzzy
Zoeller's one of the new computer players, replacing Arnold
Palmer as "king of the impossible birdie putts" - but the
commentary is a different matter altogether. At first, I wondered
why Microsoft chose to not make the sound script with the two
broadcasters' dialogue the default choice for both tourneys and
single games. But after hearing the so-called commentary -
complete with huge gaps of silence followed by failed attempts at
humor or insipid post- observations - it's not surprising
that it's buried in the game's labyrinthine setup menus. Someone
let me know when a golf game gets audio analysis right.
New players will appreciate the inclusion of a nice set of
tutorials explaining all aspects of gameplay - and hopefully
they'll learn enough to avoid the temptation to use the new
one-click type. Five new modes of play have been added,
including Fuzzy Zoeller's Wolf Challenge, but since LS 1999 let
you design your own custom modes of play, this seems like more of
an afterthought than anything else.
LS 2000's most important change is in the game's new multiplayer
support options: Now you will be able to compete on the MSN
Gaming Zone, as well as compete in the Links LS Online tour. This
should be welcome news for any Links fan who didn't care for the
heavy ad content on Mplayer, home to Links LS '98 and '99 ('99 is
also supported on the Microsoft Gaming Zone), and there's usually
no city of nents even for quick, casual games. But
performance might be an issue for less patient gamers: Unlike the
impressive speed of play in the Jack Nicklaus Online Golf Tour
(thanks to all players shooting simultaneously in real time),
Links LS 2000 can suffer from considerable delays as you and your
nent pick clubs and set up s. But it's definitely a great
experience when things are going smoothly, and the LS Online Tour
has tons of online tournaments open to every skill class.
Links LS 2000 naturally has everything that has made this the
best-selling golf sim series ever: great physics, offline
tournaments, in-depth -customization options, and an existing
library of more than two dozen of the world's most renowned
courses. In short, this is probably the version of Links LS you
should buy, provided you don't already own a recent version. But
thanks to games like Jack Nicklaus 6 and PGA Championship Golf,
the days of simply assuming the latest iteration of Links is the
best golf sim around are long gone - especially if the series
doesn't begin to evolve more quickly than it has in the past
couple of installments. -- Stephen Poole
--Copyright ©1999 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction
in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written
permission of GameSpot is prohibited. -- GameSpot
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