STAFF REVIEW of ACL Pro Cornhole (Xbox One)


Tuesday, April 11, 2023.
by Adam Dileva

ACL Pro Cornhole Box art Say what you want about the name, but the sport of Cornhole is quite entertaining to play in real life. If I go to a park or barbeque with friends and one of these are setup, it’s basically a guarantee I’m going to challenge someone for a few rounds. While its roots are over a century old, the Cornhole we recognize today took its form in the 70’s and 80’s. It seems as though the game has had a popularity increase since the American Cornhole League (ACL) was founded almost a decade ago in 2015. Since then there’s been a standardization, official tournaments, bags and pro players.

The sport has grown enough to apparently warrant the video game adaptation, so here we are with ACL Pro Cornhole, aiming to recreate what it’s like to play as a pro in the ACL. Developed by FarSight Studios, there’s a surprising around of authenticity when it comes to the Pro players included, commentators, official bags and tournament recreations, but the question remains, is it actually fun to play? Well, that’s where there’s some cornfusion.

While there’s no formal career mode, you’re simply thrown into a Tournament without any tutorial or explanation of the sport. Choose your Pro player of choice from a small handful unlocked from the beginning and jump right into the game. It would have been a bit more interesting if you could create your player and work your way up from Amateur into the ACL Pro league, but there’s nothing like that here at all, and calling it a Career mode is a bit of a stretch as well.

While I could only assume that most purchasing ACL Pro Cornhole are generally going to be avid Cornhole fans and know the sport already, given how niche the sport is, some sort of rule explanations would have been helpful for newcomers. I’ll admit, I thought I knew the core rules for Cornhole, but turns out I really didn’t. Naturally once I started playing and not understanding the scoring system or terminology, I had to do some research online.


Now that I was caught up on the rules and scoring, I jumped right in figuring I’d be good to go to at least be somewhat competitive. Well, if there was any semblance of a tutorial maybe I would have been, but no, you’re simply thrown right into a match without any explanation of exactly how to play or given strategies. This is where I paused and went to the settings to see where the button mapping was so I at least had an idea of how to play.

No wonder I couldn’t figure out how to actually toss my bag, because you play your shots much like a golf game, pulling back on the Right Stick and then forward to determine your power and accuracy, and I use that term very loosely. Even if you get the meter exactly where you want, good luck if it actually tosses your bag where you want or does what you expect. You’re able to change the arc of your toss, as well as the angle of the bag and amount of spin, but none of this really matters given how unfair the CPU is with their shots.

Oh there are difficulty choices, but I can't tell any difference from Easy or Hard, as the CPU will simply destroy you every match regardless how you perform unless you can nail your Airmail’s (getting your bag directly into the hole) every single shot, as that’s what they tend to do quite often without any issue. You can choose to toss the bag the slick or sticky side down, and while it tends to make a minor difference, not as much as I thought it would.

While ACL Pro Cornhole boasts that you can play as 32 different top Pro’s, they need to be unlocked which is done via your levels you earn with XP from completing matches. It’ll be rare to win though, so this is painfully slow, so hopefully there’s no a Pro you have your heart dead set on playing early. While I think I only recognize one ACL player, fans should be happy to know that they are recognizable with their real pictures in place and look pretty much their real life counterparts in-game. Apparently they’ve been motion captured to recreate their actual skills and strategy as well.


Adding to the ACL authenticity is also having Trey Ryder and Bernie Nabors as your commentary crew, narrating what’s happening in the match and how poorly you just threw that last toss. There’s not a whole lot of variety in the lines recorded, as you’ll start to hear the same things over again quite quickly, though I do appreciate the effort that went into adding them, as there’s really not much in the way of background music that plays otherwise.

You’re able to also choose Quick Play matches, either 1v1 or 2v2, against the CPU or friends. Again, only against your friends will you have a chance at actually winning though, so best to play this for a while until you get the hang of how to play. As you do slowly and eventually level up, you can spend earned skill points to boost certain parameters like your slide, airmail, rolls and pushes, though even after a handful of point spent, I didn’t really notice much of a difference.

You can also choose from nine different official ACL bag manufacturers such as Local Bags, Lucky Bags Cornhole, Reynolds Bags, Slide-Rite Series, Ultra, Skill Shots Cornhole, Kontraband Athletics, BG Cornhole and Fire Cornhole. They have different colors and patterns and even stats, but again, even choosing the one with the best ‘sticky’ stat, I didn’t notice all that much of a difference.

Playing as your chosen Pro, you’ll unlock more as you level up, but I none of it really mattered given how cheap the CPU is constantly throwing airmail's nearly every shot. You can see a small "slick" or "sticky" side message where you aim, presumably to affect how the bag physics play out when landing on the board, but again, I didn’t find all that much of a difference. Also, it seemed to randomly change my shot type back to slick side even though I prefer sticky for some odd reason. And if you want to rotate your throwing angle or loft, there’s no quick reset to default, so I hope you remember what your preference is and your spin. You can even take a side step to get a slightly different angle on your tosses, but sometimes this defaulted back to my original starting point.


While there’s multiplayer available, unfortunately it’s not online and only local. You can play in singles or doubles, but for some reason whenever I’m paired with a CPU player, they seem to not make those amazing airmail shots every time like the opponents do, so you can’t even count on them reliably to help your team out in a doubles match. It’s frustrating to place a blocker only to have the CPU bypass them entirely every time with pinpoint accuracy, even on Easy.

While the setting of the ACL appears to be quite official with its layout, the markings around the arena and even down to the Johnsonville adverts slapped around everywhere, it certainly does look like Cornhole you’d watch on TV. Between matches I do wish there was something a bit more than staring at the blank arena for a few seconds as things reset, like maybe having the players go to get their bags, but there’s nothing like that. Even the limited crowd barely animates and multiple people are moving in unison, adding for a very empty feeling when playing.

ACL Pro Cornhole certainly looks and sounds like a match of Cornhole and has certainly recreated the sport, but getting consistently demolished by the near perfect CPU every single match only stays entertaining for so long. While it’s hard to recommend outside of the diehard Cornhole fans, those that enjoy the niche sport will surely find some entertainment here, even if the game is trying to constantly setup blockers to prevent you winning.

**ACL Pro Cornhole was provided by the publisher and reviewed on an Xbox Series X**




Overall: 4.7 / 10
Gameplay: 3.0 / 10
Visuals: 6.0 / 10
Sound: 5.0 / 10

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