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If anything, Powerstar Golf runs deeper than its PlayStation counterpart - and quite likely any other golf game out there. Its debt goes beyond the aesthetic, and the clean and simple game of golf that Powerstar offers is backed up by a deep pool of systems. What'll be waiting there for you is a take on the sport that's more Everybody's Golf than Tiger Woods - in fact, with its soft-edged caricatures and beaming colour palette, Powerstar owes an awful lot to Clap Hanz's long-running PlayStation series. Having started off as an Xbox 360 downloadable game built around avatars, Microsoft liked what they saw enough to give Brighton-based developers Zoe Mode a boost up to its next-generation console, and to have Powerstar Golf prepared to be sitting on the Xbox One's download store on day one.
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It's humbler than the likes of Dead Rising 3, Ryse or Forza Motorsport, but it occupies a different, more relaxed space. All of which makes some of the less hyped games like Zoo Tycoon all the more pleasing, as I discovered last week - and Powerstar Golf's another little surprise awaiting people who pick up an Xbox One at launch. Big console launches are exciting enough, but they're often short on surprises - after months of build-up, hype and planning, when whichever big black box you've opted for arrives in your living room on day one there's never that much room in the launch line-up for unknown quantities.
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