Just about adequate
Hot Shots Golf Out of Bounds has a lot of weird irritants. The load times are not great and there is no way to get to any of the menus during gameplay. While golfing, the only way to return to the main menu or access any options is to soft-reboot the machine. A lot of the game's attempts to be cute are really obnoxious-- NPCs will wander around the course in front of you and then run out of the way when you hit the ball, which is distracting. Your caddy will talk, or sneeze, or whatever while you're preparing the swing. The audience will also make the same irritating comments during your swing such as, "Hit it carefully, there!" Even worse, if you're doing poorly the people in the crowd will shout insults at you! What the hell kind of golf tournament allows hecklers? Even if you could go to the options menu during gameplay there is no way to turn these voices off.
Other than that it's a fairly standard 'cartoon golf' game, maybe a bit of a throwback compared to how EA revamped the genre during the PS2 generation. You can use the traditional three button power/accuracy meter or a new 'advanced' playstyle which has you doing more or less the same thing in time to animations. Problem with this advanced mode is that you lose any sense of the numbers going on under the hood, making traditional mode better overall. There's an unlock system that has you winning tournaments to get new characters, clubs, and caddies, but it's all somewhat abstract. You can get a new set of clubs that will take the character Nick from having a B in "Impact" to an A, but will reduce his "Control" to a C. One good idea is that each character has a loyalty meter that improves their stats the more you play with them, making sure they don't become totally obsolete when new, higher-tier characters are unlocked.
The closest series to Hot Shots is probably the Mario Golf games, and the courses here are a little bland comparatively. The characters are not that appealing, either, with their weird porcelain doll quality. Ultimately this game just had me pining for Mario Golf on the Gamecube.
