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Now here's product confidence for you. Not only have GBH put this out at a time when the world is still stunned by MicroProse Golf and PGA Tour, but they've put it out on the GBH Gold label, which makes it £2 more expensive than its only competitor in the budget golf market, World Class Leaderboard. Unfortunately for GBH, World Class Leaderboard is also the better game.

Ultimate Golf (which I'm sure used to be Greg Norman's Ultimate Golf, incidentally) works in a similar fashion to the US Gold title, with the view of the course being built up before your eyes for each shot, and hitting the ball controlled by two swing meters governing strength and amount of hook/slice. So far so fair enough, and indeed the game more or less works as a functioning golf sim.

Where it falls down is in the shoddy presentation (whereby you're frequently unsure if you or a computer-controlled player is actually playing at any given moment), in the long wait between shots, and in the unconvincing ball movement, in which your ball often looks like it's attached to a piece of invisible elastic. Also, the sound effects and animation are lacklustre in the extreme, and the grid effect which is overlaid on the course to portray contours only really serves to make it look artificial and a little bit lucky.

To be absolutely fair, this is a playable enough game in its own right, but when put up against the other golf titles on the market, either full-price or budget, it lacks the quality to compete.

Not terrible by any means, but not in the same league in gameplay terms as even the aging Leaderboard. Fails to justify the higher price point.