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The Retreat at Quail Valley26
by Jamey Hribal
| Links Corner Course Database ID Number - 1554 |
Release Date |
CRZ Filesize |
Par |
Course Length |
| 2005-02-28 |
58,818,560 bytes |
71 |
7416 yards |
| Type |
Style |
CRZ Filename |
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FICTIONAL |
WOODLAND |
The Retreat at Quail Valley26.crz |
| Course ID |
Course Key |
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LINKS CORNER REVIEW |
Reviewed by: Big Three
Designer Background: This is the second course released by Jamey Hribal. His first course was Pacifica Point, released in May of 2004.
Course Overview: The Retreat at Quail Valley is a Par 71 fictional woodland design playing 7416 yards from the back tees. There are three sets of tees. The Par 71 comes from the fact that the back nine has just one Par 5. The course is set in a mountain valley of grasses and heavy woods. The panorama is the Whistler's panorama, and dominates many of the views from the course.
Layout/Playability: The layout of the course is fairly good, although it could have benefited from a few of the really long Par 4's being replaced by shorter, more strategic Par 4's, but overall it is a nice layout. There are a couple of risk/reward holes. The 2nd hole is a 584-yard Par 5 with a very wide fairway. Any tee shot hitting the fairway has a chance to go for the green in two, but the shot is downhill from most often a downhill lie. The green is very small, and is surrounded by deep grass and a creek that runs around the front and both sides. There is also a bunker guarding the front right. The shot is such that, while success grants you an eagle chance and almost assures you a birdie, missing the green by more than a handful of yards means you will have to scramble for Par or even worse. The 8th hole is a 309-yard Par 4 that plays downhill. The green sits on a peninsula that juts into a lake, so the green is surrounded on three sides by water, and even covers the front entrance to the green, leaving a very narrow opening. With any kind of wind in your face, the green is not really reachable, but the water is. The smart play is to hit a 3 wood and wedge on for a birdie. With any other kind of wind, the green is reachable, but it is a hard target to hit. The smart play is still a 3 wood and wedge. In practice, I've hit the water a lot more than I've hit the green.
On the other hand, the 3rd hole is just poor golf architecture. It is a 484 yard Par 4, with a fairway that runs straight for about 470 yards. The green is then placed to the left of the fairway, so that from the air the hole takes a 90-degree left turn at the green. The green is tucked behind a wall of trees. This effectively reduces the playable width of the fairway to about a 10 yard strip on the extreme right hand side of the fairway, and even then you have to hit a draw to get on the green, and any pin left of the center of the green is virtually impossible to get anywhere near. I don't mind a tough Par 4 or two on a course, but this one is just a bad design.
The putting on the course is about average difficulty. Although there are a lot of flat, straight putts to be had, there are also a lot of sneaky breaks that you don't quite see. Overall the putting is very fair.
The main challenge at Quail Valley comes from the heavily planted deep grass just beyond the rough. Most fairways are generous enough, followed by the band of rough and then the deep grass. The majority of trees are planted in this deep grass. A ball drifting into this stuff is sure to cost a stroke on most occasions. The fairways give you enough room so that a shot landing in the deep grass probably deserves to be penalized due to the shot being hit poorly. Over half of the Par 4's lack fairway bunkers, but on the holes where they do exist they are placed to come into play.
One problem with this course is that the holes are just laid out randomly on the plot. The holes are not laid out sequentially, so that one hole may play on the right hand side of the plot, the next on the left hand side, and the next back on the right hand side. The 16th, 17th and 18th holes all play in the same direction and are placed side by side. So after playing the 16th, you would have to travel back the length of the hole to play the 17th, then travel the length of the 17th to go back and play the 18th. It has no impact on playing the course, but it is a very poor element of the design.
Planting/Textures: For the most part, the planting and textures achieve the desired effect. The trees create more of a visual hazard than an actual one. It takes a pretty wild shot to reach the trees most of the time, but the player is left with an impression of playing through a chute, although in reality the trees are far enough back to not be an issue on most shots. The technique is well done. Likewise, the grasses also achieve the desired look, although once again a little more variety and a little less cloning would have enhanced the overall design. One issue I have with the grasses is that in some places they are planted as a false front, so that a little inspection beyond the front wall of grasses reveals that there is no grass planted beyond that. This is mostly along the edges of the course and behind some tees.
Overall, the textures used work fairly well, although the fringe texture used as a first cut between the fairway and the rough doesn't quite work and looks out of place. The fringe is flat and lifeless looking compared to the grainy and raised looking textures used for the fairway and rough.
APCD: The APCD work on The Retreat at Quail Valley looks pretty well at first glance, but a closer inspection reveals a lot of problems. For starters, the plot of land was too small and there are a lot of holes that are up against the right hand edge of the plot. This is never a good thing, and the use of the Whistler's pano accentuates the problem. Another oddity is that the same huge picture as a 2D object is stuck behind the 7th green in about 5 or 6 places to presumably help hide the closeness of the pano, but succeeds only in creating some visual problems of their own.
The seam blending on the course also has some problems. The seam between the bunker and the yellow/brown rough has the properties assigned backwards. A ball several feet inside the bunker (in the sand) reads and plays as rough and then a ball several feet outside of the bunker sitting in the rough reads and plays as sand. This is a problem that definitely affects the playability of the course. The bunkers that are in the fairway also have a bad seam, with a missing property assignment so that the terrain reads fairway to none to sand. There is also a seam between two different types of deep grass that has a strip of rough property assigned to it. Given the location, it is unlikely that the rough section is correct. Some of these may have been caused by the known APCD bug, although I suspect the bunker/yellow-brown rough seam was not related to this and the property assignment was simply reversed. Either way, these are issues that should have been caught before release.
There are also several places, mostly around bunkers, where some poor mesh-work causes irregular spikes of a texture. The cart path is just placed onto the land without regard to elevation so that there are places where it is placed on the side of a hill that is so steep a cart would tip over if driven on it.
Extras: The course has several extras included. Most notably the designer has done a nice job of blending in some bird and animal sounds throughout the course. Most importantly with this, the designer has left the volume at a reasonable level. In a few places the frequency was a bit on the high side, but overall it was done well. The course also includes a nice looking custom cameo and splash screen, along with custom tee markers and hole signs. The course includes nice looking hole previews, although they only show the distance to the green from one location and do little to help with identifying distances to hazards. Mr. Hribal also included a shadow file to save those with slower machines some initial loading time. One missing element was the course did not include a readme file.
MOD Notes: The course plays well with the MOD. The increased distance of the driver and 3 wood is beneficial here with the numerous long Par 4s.
Summary: There is a lot here to be encouraged about. Due to the numerous APCD issues I can't recommend this course, although I'm sure that many will find the playability and layout fun and challenging. Potentially, I could have given this course a higher rating than I did, but the various issues prevented that. Mr. Hribal exhibited a good concept of the course, enhanced by the general look of the planting. With the exception of the 3rd hole, the layout is sound, fair and fun to play. The designer shows good promise and I would encourage him to consider future designs. It would be very beneficial to line up some beta testers to help polish up his next effort prior to release.
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