Innova Disc Golf features four different 18-basket courses on which you can play either the full 18, the front nine, or the back nine baskets.  All of the baskets are par 3, which, for those of you unfamiliar with golf, means that if you get the disc into the basket with exactly three throws, you've broken even for that basket and nothing is added to or subtracted from your score.  The idea is to have as low a score as possible, though, going into negative digits, so the fewer shots it takes to make each basket, the lower your overall score will be and the better you'll do.  Also featured are 11 different styles of discs, all with different flying characteristics.  Whereas in golf you choose your club based on the type of shot you want to make, in Innova Disc Golf you choose your discs based on the same sort of reasoning.  Some of the discs are designed to fly long and straight, others curve to the left or right depending on whether you've made a backhand or forehand throw, and a couple are designed for mid- to short-range shots and "putting."  Knowing the discs' different flying characteristics and whether to throw backhandedly or forehandedly is important because you won't always have a straight line-of-sight, and will often need to curve around trees or adjust your throwing strength based on your distance from the basket.

The game is mouse-driven and supports up to 14 players at the same computer or over a network (IPX, LAN, TCP/IP).  Apparently there weren't any disc-golf celebrities to endorse the product, so you're free to customize the name, gender, skill (novice, amateur, pro), and handedness of each player.  Records are kept track of, including the best novice, amateur, and pro scores for each of the four courses, as well as the longest drive of the game overall and the longest shot made in the game overall for each skill level.  Options in the game include whether to have music, background sounds, and player comments (such as "Aw man!" and "Smooth move, Ex-lax"—though I'm afraid not as creative as these).  You can also set the wind options for each course.  A Pro Season feature is available, too, which allows you to play through two rounds on each of the four courses in a tournament-like competition.

Only in the most basic sense is the game fun.  Make the shots, win the rounds, beat the records.  The discs show more creative effort than the courses.  Each disc has helpful popup information to remind you of its flying characteristics, and each disc has a creative name, such as Aero, Banshee, Cheetah, Gazelle, Puma, Rhyno, and Roc, therefore offering some personality to the game.  Having different skill levels was a smart move, because it helps players first get used to throwing the discs, and then learn to deal with wind factors, but the courses themselves are relatively featureless and unexciting, and the system for aiming and throwing the discs is clunky.  While I admire the attempt to explore new sports and move PC games in new directions, I'm disappointed when those attempts demonstrate only mediocre effort.  Some of the game's features provide a degree of entertainment, as I'll discuss below, but it's the sort of short-lived party entertainment where everyone gets together for a few baskets and then quickly drifts away because there's not much to hold their attention.  I'll have to recommend that curious folk and disc-golf fanatics alike should skip this game altogether, but do keep on the lookout for similar games that have more features and show more creativity.  Making the shots, winning the rounds, and beating the records can actually be kind of fun, when it's not tedious.

Install:  Medium.  I would say "easy," because the game loads up quickly and smoothly enough, but the problem is that it doesn't recognize when you've already installed the game, thereby causing the installation screen to come up every time you put the disc in your drive (assuming you have Autoplay turned on).

Gameplay:  5.  First off, it was confusing that the game instructions, as the manual indicates, assume everyone is right-handed and throws backhandedly, for the sake of describing how the discs will fly and break.  Forgetting this, I was clicking for a forehanded throw my first few times, and was surprised that the discs were breaking in the opposite direction than the popup information said they would.  Then it occurred to me that having the option to select Backhand or Forehand for your throw was just a clunky way of indicating how you wanted to approach each basket.  In golf, you pick your club and you aim your shot, and then the ball flies toward the cup or slices away based on how well you made and executed your selections.  In this game you pick your disc and you aim your throw; adding in the extra decision of how you want to hold the disc when you throw it, while probably true to life, seems besides the point and adds an artificial complexity, not to mention my initial confusion.

As for aiming your throw, the game has another whole level of complexity that, in and of itself, is enough.  You can select the strength, height, up/down and right/left tilts, and direction of the throw.  The strength, height, and tilt functions are designed particularly well:  one static disc graphic represents all three functions.  It would've been perfect if that graphic weren't static, but could be moved around on the screen to indicate the direction of the throw.  Instead, a separate aiming bar is used to indicate the direction.  This bar is a thin, dashed, green-and-white vertical line that's very hard to see on the screen, with all the trees and green in the background.  A very basic overhead map is used to track the flight of your disc, which is helpful because on the main screen itself discs often disappear into the distance on long throws.  Also, a close-up basket camera box sits in the top right corner of the screen, but this feature is a useless nicety, the only purpose of which is to show a graphic of your disc flying by whenever it's near the basket and within the range of the camera.  It's not meant as an aiming tool.  There is also a wind direction indicator at the top of the screen, but I couldn't figure out how to use it to my advantage because it's not explained anywhere in the game or the manual.

Graphics:  4.  The courses all looked somewhat similar to me, despite the changes in tree type and color.  Static backgrounds with static trees and water in the foreground.  Whatever lushness there was was diminished by the fact that nothing onscreen moved other than the discs flying through the air.  I liked that the waters were reflective, but they seemed to be reflective of things in the background, like the mountains, rather than the sky or the nearby trees.  It would've been nice, too, if the discs would've appeared to float on top of these water hazards or could have skipped off of them, rather than just land on them as if they were solid ground or ice.  As I mentioned above, the aiming bar was hard to see; the baskets themselves—poles with circular baskets held to them by chains—were done with low detail and therefore also hard to see clearly.  Disc trajectories were done nicely, however, and the simple graphic of a red line being traced along the overhead map was helpful in determining the success of your disc's flight.  One of the game's few bugs was with a profile graphic that was supposed to indicate the basket's height vis-à-vis your location:  the graphic only flashed on the screen and then disappeared whenever I clicked for it to pop up.  Other secondary features were a Spot Basket graphic that brought the basket zooming in at you like a ghost so you could see in what direction it lay, and a Rotate View feature that let you turn your view for the sake of confusing yourself a little.

Sound:  3.5.  This game's sound was its weakest element.  There was some nice instrumental rock-drum music to accompany the menus, but there was no music at all while playing the game (unless that was another bug, as one of the options was, in fact, to have music).  The sound effects consisted of an occasional bird call as well as the rustle of leaves and thump to the ground whenever a disc struck a tree.  Wind made no sound moving through the trees or wooshing under the discs as they flew through the air, and the male voice and female voice sounded the same for each player:  nothing more than occasional comments wired in, such as "Oh man, that one's headed for the jungle," "I hope I can find that one," and "That one's gonna be wet."

Difficulty:  6.  Audio/Visual shortcomings aside, Innova Disc Golf provides a moderate challenge.  It's a little slow going, moving from one basket to the next, but aiming and throwing is somewhat fun because of the "gotta make the shot" effect.  Because of the unnecessary difficulties, however, getting to a point where you're comfortable aiming and throwing takes longer than it should.  Fortunately, the game includes both Mulligan and Drop Shot options.  With the Mulligan option, you can re-take your throw as many times as you want without any penalty.  This is a good training tool, but would take the fun and challenge out of an official game.  The Drop Shot option allows you to move disc anywhere in line with where it landed, so if you end up off in the trees you can Drop your disc back on the course.  There is a one-throw penalty (a point added to your score) for taking advantage of this option.

Concept:  5.5.  I liked the idea of the game, thinking it brought some fresh elements to the game of golf, but I found WizardWorks' iteration of it uncreative and unsatisfying.  Innova Disc Golf is short on features.  The only way you're going to be able to play a network multiplayer game is if you know someone else who happens to be interested in disc golf and wouldn't mind sitting through a few hours of repetitive play.  If they go back to the drawing board with this one, I would suggest they concentrate on adding more to the game that will make people want to keep playing for more than just a few rounds.  What's already in the game could work better with just a few tweaks, and the unified height, strength, and tilt function works really well.  But I'd like to see more stats to track, more course variety, and, when I think of Frisbee, I think of Tron, so why not add a Tron mode where you and one opponent have the option of beaning each other with discs for extra points?

Overall:  4.5.  There really wasn't enough to this game for me to enjoy it.  Even though disc golf isn't as popular as the big team sports, I would've liked to have seen the developers put as much effort into this game as other companies put into their football, baseball, hockey, etc. games.  On the other hand, if you're just making a quick game to capitalize on a niche market, don't expect to get a decent review score.  The nicest, most colorful feature of the game were, in fact, the different discs—displayed gloriously in full detail and full color on your screen as you cycle through them looking for the perfect one for each throw—and for about two seconds I even thought it'd be nice to own a couple of them and give the sport a shot, but after a few tedious, unthrilling rounds with Innova Disc Golf, I decided to just wait until something else came along and enticed me.  In the meantime, I'll be in the park beaning my friends with Frisbees.