Illfonic’s Ghetto Golf might just have the most ridiculous premise for a videogame since 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand.
Most people bring a baseball hat and maybe their lucky charm when they hit the golf course or the driving range. Vonte, the main character of Illfonic’s Ghetto Golf, brings a machine gun.
Good, because the mean streets of Oakland, California, are no place to play games with your life, but they are a far worse place to play games of golf. Vonte’s a scrappy kid trying to make it big in the world in the golfing world, and to do that he has to find and nail a series of golf holes strewn through Oakland. Vonte’ll have to track down holes and decipher urban courses to hit paydirt – sometimes banking a shot off a dumpster or a gas station primed to explode is the only way to nab that birdie. Only problem aside from that, of course, is that he’ll have to fight through gangsters, cops and rivals to make it to the top.
Not too big a deal for Vonte, though. He’s got his guns, which can be upgraded a la Resident Evil 4/5 and are fired Gears of War style, but he also has his explosive golf balls and performance-enhancing drugs that’ll give him the edge he needs. We’re not talking steroids here, we’re talking straight up narcotics. And Illfonic’s Chuck Brungardt wonders if his game’s too edgy.
Once Vonte has climbed the ladder, he’ll move on to more upscale environs, like an area full of cops and hippies (guessing this is supposed to be Oakland’s less dodgy Bay Area neighbor San Francisco) and eventually a full-fledged country club.
The game is the brainchild of R&B artist and producer Raphael Saadiq, who spent much of his childhood devising makeshift golf courses in the real Oakland. Saadiq’s best known for his work in 90s group Tony! Toni! Toné! Remember them? Yeah, me neither.
So far Ghetto Golf only exists in prototype form as an Unreal Tournament 3 mod, but Illfonic hopes to get it made into a genuine downloadable game for PC, PS3 and 360, and they were shopping it around to publishers at GDC. Here’s hoping for the best.
[Via MTV Multiplayer]
