Links Championship Edition 2002 (Mac)

List Price: $29.99 Discount Price: $39.95

Accessories:
PC Gamer (1-year)	ATI 100-435317 Radeon X800 XT Mac Edition for G5 256MB AGP Video Card

Customer Reviews:

Wish it worked better [Posted on 2003-02-06]
I had high hopes for this game. Pre-ordered and waited months. The Graphics are beautiful, the courses are challenging, but after a few weeks of crashing every other time I played, I've purged the game from my files and am using all that memory for more productive endeavors. A major disappointment. I refuse to re-configure my computer for a game.

Good Graphics but Clumsy to Use [Posted on 2003-02-28]
Links 2002 for Mac is OK, but not great. First, if you are an IMac user like me, you'll need to change your screen resolution to 800x600 for this product to even work. The IMac system has the right graphics card, however the program just cannot take the high quality resolution and it bombs the whole system if you don't turn down the resolution.

The second irritation of the software is you need the CDs to make it work. I'm all for protecting intellectual rights, but come on. CD Swapping? You need disk #1 to start the program and you need other disks to do other steps (like loading golf courses). In all a very clumsy way to handle what should be a great game.

Bottom line, it's graphically appealing, fun to play, but very clumsy and does not take full advantage of the IMac graphics capabilities.

Nice challenging golf game for the Mac [Posted on 2003-04-23]
I play this game usually in downtime on the train or just to kick back and relax for a challenging round. Graphically it is a pretty good game but nowhere near the graphics level of PS2 or XBox. The physics of the game are fantastic and the courses rather challenging. Seems extremely difficult to get a hole in one. I run this on my Powerbook G4 with 768 megs of ram and the 8 megs of video running OS 10.2.4. It runs flawlessly when no other apps are open, but if you have a few ram intensive apps open, close them before you begin the game. One enhancement that I see as a neccessity is the ability to still navigate the dock when the game is running. I run iTunes at the same time as playing usually, and if I have to close the screen for some reason, iTunes stops playing and cannot be restarted without going to the dock.

Similar in appearance to LS 97-2000, until you actually play [Posted on 2003-09-17]
I got the cd-rom, was annoyed by the mandatory loading of disc 1 to play. There may be a way around it, if you delete the Intro Quicktime Bold Gator video from your Links CE folder. After doing that, I don't have to place disc 1 in for verification anymore when I play CE. At the very least, you won't have to see the stupid video each time you start Links CE.

The adding of courses via the CD's 1-4 can be spotty, sometimes not loading them to your hard drive, but insisting on loading them from directly from the cd. You should be able to place CRZ courses directly into the courses folder and have them show up from the course manager as available courses.

As for play, the graphics do not dazzle, but CE has changed significantly in ball physics, both in flight, and in putting. Also, hitting into the rough has huge penalties, just like it should. In links 2000, except for special rough on some courses, most of the time you just went down an Iron. The putting is much harder and the colored grids are nice for viewing gradient changes.

The CRX to CRZ course converter results in courses that look just like they did when you played them in LS 2000 but with the new physics in effect--much more fun.

THe games can be buggy in some cases when hitting the ball, but all in all, this games plays similar to the windows version, just does not look quite as nice.

The worst thing about this game is the inability to play Windows users online--I dont get that at all, it is senseless. Still, this is a great golf game!

Make sure you have plenty of RAM, and a g-5 dual would not hurt.

Best Golf to be had on Mac [Posted on 2007-01-22]
I have been using the Links game since the 1999 version, initially on a PowerMac and then for the last several years on a PC since that was the only platform side that seemed to be advancing the state of the game. At some point I started having all sorts of bugs with the Links 2003 PC version. I installed patches, changed machines and yelled at my monitor a lot. Then I gave up. Recently I bought a 2.16 GHz 24' iMac. I have Parallels installed and thought I might try Links 2003 again but ran into disc verification problems. That's when I found that there was a sort of updated version for the Mac, Links CE 2002. It's a bit of a step backward from L 2003 but it does work and so far I have had no glitches at all. I read a review in here about having to load a disc to play each time and spotty success in loading extra courses but I have not experienced either of those issues. I did trash the annoying Gator movie. I also have had no issues running at 1600 x 1200 resolution. It doesn't go entirely wide screen but it looks great.

I believe there is a patch available for this version but am not certain; I will hunt around the Links Country Club or Links Corner and find out.

Links CE is not as advanced as Links 2003 PC but it's the only links I have that is working. I do not care for the Tiger Woods games so I guess this is it for me for now. Unfortunately it does not appear that the Mac users are going to see any upgrades anytime soon if ever. That's a shame; this game was (and for the most part still is) ahead of everything else that calls itself computer golf.

Question: Does anyone know if the .crz files will work on both PC and Mac platforms? I have about 40 courses for the PC and would like to be able to use them. Send me a note at rgharrison@gmail.com if you know.

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