Those who have been following the Outlaw sports series know what to expect from Outlaw Golf 2: a crude and wacky take on perhaps the world's most genteel sport. It throws you out of the prestigious country club and into a bizarre alternate reality where havoc runs loose on the golf course. The extreme elements in the game, such as the ability to punch out your caddy and the scantily clad ladies hitting the links, work well to reinforce this image. It clearly offers a distinctive atmosphere for a golf game that can't be found anywhere else, and it works very well.

There are a variety of gameplay mechanics that are unique to Outlaw Golf 2. First is the Composure meter, which swings towards one end or another depending on how well you're playing. If you hit the ball into the rough or just play poorly in general, your Composure drops. This means that your character gets visibly frustrated and you can't hit as far or as straight as you normally can. But once you hit a great shot, make a putt, hit a spectator, or any of a variety of achievements, the Composure swings back up and your performance gets boosted.

For a quick Composure boost, you can choose to beat the living tar out of your caddy. This is done in a minigame where you have to time button presses in order to land successful hits. The entire beat-down sequence is hilarious to watch. There's also a golf cart driving mini game that you can play in the middle of a round where you have to drive over ramps through rings. If you can successfully complete the drive in the time allotted, you are awarded with one perfect shot that you can activate. These interesting minigames don't add significantly much to the gameplay overall, but it's a fun break from regular golf.

I came into this game expecting some quick arcadey action, but Outlaw Golf 2 is surprisingly deep. You get all the shot options that you would find in a true golf simulation, such as punch and flop shots. Getting accustomed to the golf physics is also integral to the game. Judging the terrain of the holes is crucial to success, since if you don't plan a shot well, your ball will hit a bend in the fairway and bounce all the way into the rough. I actually think the physics may be over-exaggerated too much, since the fairways and greens are super fast. If you're not careful, a simple chip from the fringe of the green can shoot past the hole and leave you with a significantly longer putt back.

Speaking of putting, Outlaw Golf 2's putting system works fairly well. It's really difficult to read the green because the contours of the putting surface are not well represented visually. Instead, at the push of a button, the game tells you the exact path of the ball and you have to adjust your aim and putting strength accordingly so that the ball will roll into the bottom of the cup.

So what you have to do is first estimate how far and in what direction you need to putt, hit the "read" button to see how well you lined up the putt, and then adjust. The catch is that you can only do three of these "reads" for each putt. If you use up all three reads (which you will) and miss the putt, you get a fresh set of three for the next putt. This system doesn't really feel like putting and I don't like relying on the computer to tell me where to putt, but it works for gameplay purposes.

The main mode of Outlaw Golf 2 is Tour mode, where you challenge other golfers to earn goodies like costumes, equipment, and extra characters. It's pretty standard, but what I enjoy most is the Outlaw Range, which is a set of fifteen skill challenges that you can play through to beef up your character stats. There are a variety of fun modes here, such as driving a golf cart or teeing up explosive balls and launching them into a field of cows. There's also a crazy Mini-Golf course with a lot of obstacles to get in your way.

Unlike Tiger Woods 2005 though, which is an unbelievably easy game to level up in, Outlaw Golf 2 really challenges you to play well to make any progress in the game. Most of the skill challenges are near impossible to complete without having more advanced equipment. So you'll have to spend time in Tour mode to unlock them. The problem is, of course, that you can only progress so far in Tour mode before your character's weaknesses make it tough to win matches. The solution then is to head back to the Outlaw Range and work on your skills. To complete the game requires a fair amount of dedication, which makes Outlaw Golf 2 much deeper than the party game I was expecting it to be.

The biggest addition to Outlaw Golf 2 over its predecessor is Live play, and I'm impressed with how well it's implemented. There are a total of thirteen modes you can play, ranging from the traditional stroke and skins modes to wacky ones like Casino, where players ante one dollar for each shot, and My One and Only, which gives you only one club and a putter to play through the course. Another fun mode is Baseball Golf - a birdie is equivalent to a single, an eagle to a double, a bogey to one out, etc. The winner is the player with the most home runs after 18 holes.

In many ways, Outlaw Golf 2 is the best online golf game currently available. It supports four players, and the coolest feature is that you can choose whether to take turns hitting shots or to all hit simultaneously. While typical golf games make you wait for the other people in the party to hit, in Outlaw Golf 2 everybody can play at the same time, which makes online matches incredibly streamlined and a lot more fun. It's hilarious to see three other balls fly up into the air while you're lining up a shot.

The visual effects aren't incredibly impressive, but they get the job done. Character models are well rendered and have great animations. The eight courses in the game are very distinctive visually, ranging from a New Jersey course with highways and telephone wires hanging all over the landscape to a Western movie set.

The soundtrack in the game isn't that hot, but there's custom soundtrack support so that's no problem. There are a lot of lines delivered in the game by the characters, many of which are quite humorous. Dave Attell from the Comedy Central show "Insomniac" also provides some voiceovers. The problem is that while the comments made are pretty funny the first couple times you hear them, the game tends to replay many of the same ones over and over so they become grating.

In this review I discussed the gameplay aspects of the game much more than the zany atmosphere that Outlaw Golf 2 is known for, and there's a reason for that. Sure, the offbeat characters and crazy mechanics such as beating people up in the middle of a round are intended to attract a new audience, but behind all the surface glitz is a pretty solid golf game, and gameplay is what we're all looking for, right? Playing through the single player mode and working on developing your character skills is challenging but rewarding, and you can always hop on Live and indulge in incredibly fun online matches. Many gamers may not take the game seriously because of its subject matter, but it's well worth a look, especially with its bargain price of $20. Outlaw Golf 2 is recommended, both to people who hate traditional golf as well as serious golf fans.