Super Rush’ is a thrilling golf game by way of Mario Kart

Mario Golf: Super Rush is video game golf in the same way that Rocket League is video game soccer.

Yeah, the trappings are all there. You hit a small, hard ball with one of a hand-selected set of clubs. You’re trying to get the ball into the hole in as few strokes as possible, and each course consists of 18 holes. It’s a golf game. If the basic act of using a club to hit a ball into a hole sounds appealing, you’re already halfway there.

And if not? There are plenty more Mario games out there.

Super Rush doesn’t change the sport of golf so much as it builds layers on top of that foundation. This is golf by way of Mario Kart, with a particular focus on speedy play and navigating sprawling, hazard-filled courses as you make your way from the tee to each successive lie, the spots where your hit balls land.

The fundamentals here are sound: Hitting the ball is a timing-based exercise where you press the button once an automatically filling meter lands on your desired shot power. Pretty similar to every golf game since time immemorial, but Super Rush mixes things up by letting you use a variety of buttons and double-taps to apply different levels of topspin and backspin. You can also get your ball to curve around obstacles mid-flight or take low (or high) shots by flicking the control stick in the desired direction before your ball takes flight.

(I used standard button-based controls, but you can also use Joy-Con motion controls, a la Wii Sports golf. I play my games on a Switch Lite though, so I wasn’t able to test out motion controls.)

The familiar trappings of a golfing video game are joined in Super Rush by many derivations and twists on the formula, like rain-instigated lightning that can blast you off your feet as you line up a shot and swirling gusts of wind that can lift a hit ball (and your Mii golfer as well) up and over the most towering cliffs. A clock is almost always ticking, threatening to knock even top players on the board out of the competition.

The clubs you carry along in your bag make a difference. Bringing too many impacts your running speed, which means you’re choosing between more shot flexibility and greater mobility in Speed Golf matches (protip: the latter should generally win). But you can also buy more clubs using gold earned from finished matches, and those clubs often bring extra effects, such as a sand wedge that offers more control when shooting out of bunkers or a driver that applies additional topspin.

All of the special rules and equipment tweaks are driven by the basic philosophy that underpins every creative choice in Super Rush: It’s a golf game where the physical journey across a course is just as important as strategic positioning and lining up your next shot.

It’s an idea that is introduced and then reinforced again and again in Adventure Mode, the best and only place to start learning about what makes this Mario Golf tick. Adventure is a story-driven tour through each course and every way to play. You’ll typically face a few training exercises that increase in complexity as you go before capping a location off with some kind of tournament showdown.

This is no mere tutorial mode, though. Adventure is a legitimately challenging, multi-hour exercise that introduces the basics and then forces you to master them in a variety of contexts. And while there’s plenty of competition from familiar Mushroom Kingdom denizens out on the courses, your biggest foe is almost always the timer, and the various ways a ticking clock complicates the locations themselves.

If the basic act of using a club to hit a ball into a hole sounds appealing, you’re already halfway there.

Super Rush draws on familiar sights from past Mario games to inform its golf courses and their hazards. The Balmy Desert is littered with bunkers (aka sand traps) and towering Pokeys. Wildweather Woods pits you against randomly occurring rainstorms that spew lightning and can add water hazards in spots where they wouldn’t normally appear in dry weather. Jumping your way across sinking platforms just to get to your ball is, to borrow a golf cliché, par for the course. (Sorrynotsorry.)

This is also why it’s worthwhile to jump into Adventure right away: Learning course layouts and hazards helps, but getting a handle on how movement through a course even works in each region is so essential. I restarted tons of holes and matches not out of frustration, but because I wanted to see how things like Bob-ombs and Ty-foos would affect where my shots went and how I could potentially use them to my advantage.

The Mario Kart vibes creep in more once you reach tournament play. Facing off against three other competitors means you’re racing from lie to lie as part of a group. As you’re navigating around hazards and managing a stamina bar that depletes whenever you hold the “dash” button, you’re also dodging past other players who want to mess you up.

Charged dashes and Super Dashes — the latter of which you can only use by collecting coins to fill a meter — can temporarily knock out other golfers if you time them right. The same goes for Special Shots; their effects vary from golfer to golfer, but they general work to clear hazards out of the way — a category that includes other competitors.

Your opponents have access to the same set of abilities, and they’ll use them mercilessly in an attempt to ruin your match. This can be occasionally frustrating, like when you’re on hole 17 and an unluckily timed Special Shot sends your ball sailing off a cliff, effectively turning a guaranteed par into a triple bogey or worse. But that’s a Mario sports game for ya. There’s always going to be a “Blue Shell” option to even the playing field.

All of these ideas come together in Battle Golf, which may be the thing that ensures Super Rush‘s longevity as a party game (much like Mario Kart’s racing has often been overshadowed by Battle Mode). In Battle Golf, you face off against up to three other golfers on sprawling, wide-open courses where there are multiple holes to choose from at once.

It’s a simple idea: The first to score a set number of holes wins, with each successfully sunk shot wiping that hole off the map. All the normal Speed Golf rules apply in Battle Golf’s stadium setting, so you’re still dashing around, dodging hazards, and trying to knock out opponents. Here, though, there’s also the added pressure of potentially racing to sink a putt while as many as three other people are lining up similar shots. If you take what feels like a perfect putt first but another player’s ball goes in the hole before yours arrives, that putt of yours becomes a wasted effort.

While you can also play and tweak the rules (to some extent) for Speed Golf and even no-running-required Standard Golf outside of Adventure, it’s Battle Golf that feels like the stickiest piece of Super Rush as a group activity. It’s a party-friendly mode that capably ties together every unique aspect of the rich Adventure experience, and it promises to create the kind of nail-biting competitions that leave friends shouting at friends (playfully, we hope).

Like I said right at the outset, though, the big caveat here is … it’s golf. If golfing and golf games aren’t your thing, don’t expect the addition of Thwomps, sparkly superpowers, and the colorful main cast from past Mushroom Kingdom adventures to change your mind. But like the internet’s favorite car soccer video game, Mario Golf: Super Rush‘s fresh spin on a sports classic is exactly what makes it so much fun to play and so very hard to put down.

Mario Golf: Super Rush comes to Nintendo Switch on June 25, 2021.

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