Think about this for a moment. Golf is one of the most conservative sports ever: you can't even get into the clubhouse without a salmon-coloured tank top and a suitable public school accent. So why was it chosen to be subverted with a "crazy" incarnation, when other sports don't have wacky versions?

Why don't we have foolish darts, where you have to stand in front of the board when your opponent throws, with a variety of fruit sellotaped to your head (the apple on top representing the 20, of course)? Or mental snooker, in which you attempt to pot balls into each other's gaping wide mouths, swinging the cue like a baseball bat? We're sure there's an acorn of a future reality TV show here somewhere...

Nonsense aside, King of Clubs is a straightforward crazy golf sim, complete with zany computer golfers and a slew of super-kitsch environments to putt across. These range from the prehistoric, complete with gushing lava falls and noisy dinosaurs, through to the medieval, which features olde worlde music and jousting cardboard knights whizzing about on poles in the background.

It's all highly tongue-in-cheek and the game has a lively sense of humour, throwing out some downright awful puns and amusing pieces of level design. For example, one of the holes on an Egyptian themed course has a sphinx you have to putt through, and the ball clearly emerges from out of its bottom (the sphinx's sphincter, see?).

With a simple control system that's dead easy to master, the game's initially quite a laugh. The holes feature plenty of jumps and moving obstacles to contend with, and you can pull off some very satisfying shots with a little thought. Extra variety is added via a series of ball and club power-ups which can be purchased (such as a putter that imparts swerve, or a super-speedy ball).

However, King of Clubs soon feels a little tired. Once you've played halfway through the career mode it all starts to get a touch repetitive, despite the developer's best efforts to keep the holes varied. The career is also pretty superficial and short-lived: yes, this is supposed to be a casual arcade game, but we reckon more could have been done here. Throwing in some sort of rankings or league matches would have helped keep things a bit more interesting.

There's a couple of extra modes of play aside from the normal putting action. Speed golf (a round of holes against the clock) is a decent effort, and there's also gopher golf, where you have to hit five gopher targets before holing out. This is a cute idea, but unfortunately it's just plain dull in practice. Up to four players can challenge each other in the hot-seat multiplayer, but there's no online play.

King of Clubs provides a reasonable crazy golfing fix with an endearingly daft sense of humour, although the main career mode could have used some spicing up.