efore Tiger Woods took the video game golf world by storm with his analog swing, Hot Shots and its three-click meter was the standard for the sport. Until now, the Hot Shots series has been loathe to change its formula. While this has created a consistently fun links experience, I’ve always wanted the series to take some chances and go from being good to great. This year’s Advance Shot mode doesn’t solve all of the game’s problems, but it’s a surprisingly effective addition.

At its most basic, the optional Advance Shot mechanic is still a three-click experience. One button press starts your swing, another selects power, and a final press lines up your impact. Only instead of trying to time these actions with a sliding meter along the bottom of your screen, you’re watching the arc of your golfer’s swing animation and using a few visual cues as your guides. This makes gauging your power harder at first, but after just a few holes, you’ll find that you actually have more control over how hard you hit the ball versus the traditional swing method. Furthermore, since this new shot mechanic is tied to your golfer’s swing animation, it brings you closer to the onscreen action – just like Tiger tries to do with its physical analog swing, albeit in a different way.

While you won’t hear me complaining about Hot Shots’ new swing, the game has lost a little of its verve in other areas. The chock-full items shop from Hot Shots Fore is gone, and while you can still get outfits and clubs, I don’t feel like a kid in a candy store or that I’m being spurred on in my career like I used to be. This is one small thing that makes this year’s career mode a little less engaging, but the pacing of the courses also puts a damper on it. After my first few hours of playing, I was still only playing on two courses.

These details by no means make Out of Bounds a bad game, I just wish that at a time when rival Tiger Woods has created a new, well-paced career structure, Hot Shots would step up and compete. However, I do enjoy this game’s loyalty system (encouraging repeated plays with the same golfer) and special condition matches. Sony says that it plans to offer more characters and courses via download, which is good news since the game comes with fewer numbers of both compared to the last Hot Shots. Hopefully we can look forward to the return of Ratchet or Clank in cameo roles as they have done in the past. Regardless, this game’s online lobby allows you to create your own characters through an avatar creation process while you wait to play in its 50-person tournaments, complete with online tee times.

Any golfer will tell you that their game could use a little work. While this newest version of Hot Shots ushers in a welcome new swing mechanic, it’s unfortunate that other areas have been neglected. Out of Bounds is worth getting, but what it gains in its drive distances it loses in its short game.