Recenly one of my friends I play real golf with on the weekends (as well as Rocket League, and other games) recommended that I pick up The Golf Club for PS4. This was because someone had apparently recreated our local course on it, so there’d be some novelty in playing a round in real life and then virtually.
I’d also recently picked up Rory McIlroy PGA Tour, so the timing wasn’t perfect, but it was a good opportunity to compare the games. Also, I understood that both games had been out well over a year and had been updated with content and improvements so now seemed like a decent chance to try them out. Note that I’ve put in at least 35 rounds into each game at this point so I feel like I’ve a good feel for them.
The Golf Club
I’d heard a lot of great things about this game, so I was quite excited to play - though not excited about the 35 euro price when it has been a lot lower than that, but my friend wanted to play now, so whatever. What I got was a game with a couple of really good ideas wrecked by terrible performance and other issues.
(TGC is pretty good visually. The details are poor, but the overall course and backgrounds look great from any distance other than extremely close. For whatever reason the desert type courses fare best and look fantastic.The 'hole map' shown is an brilliant feature, and one McIlroy golf lacks.)
The good:
Putting - Putting in TGC feels great. The ball moves slowly, so there’s plenty of time to anticipate whether the ball will break as you predicted or not - just like the real thing. Long putts snake this way and that across the surface on a fast green., which is fantastic fun. The green’s grid lines are just difficult enough to read to make it interesting, and putting the ball straight is easy enough, so like real putting it becomes about the read and the distance. It’s incredibly satisfying to see a long one fall, and disheartening to see a short one lip out. One issue with this system is that it’s way too hard to get a read on distance - as in how far you need to pull your putter back to send it a certain yardage - but this does tend to come with feel, and differs properly depending on the speed of the green. Overall this is the best part of the game by far.
Live online play - Playing against a friend without having to take turns is just great. Seeing their ghost ball as you hit yours is perfect. Watching a long putt of theirs drop stings, watching them take three shots to get out of the bunker will put you into gales of laughter. And best of all, it doesn’t take any longer than playing by yourself - choosing whether to wait for them or not is entirely up to you.
Amount of courses - You can play a different course for the rest of your life. Enough said. This is really the USP of the game right here.
Ghosts (asynchronous gameplay) - You can choose any ghost ball to play against as if you were playing them online. Basically every round anyone has ever played is stored by the game, and you can choose up to three to play against. This makes each round far, far more interesting than if you were just playing alone. You can choose a score that would be tough to beat, a medium one and an easier score, and then see how you get on. It’s always funny when the ‘easy’ score is killing you early, and you wonder how they shot what they did, only for them to suffer an obvious meltdown caused by one bad shot on the last couple of holes. Again, this is just like playing in a real foursome, and it’s great.
The bad:
Performance - I can’t get around it, the performance in this game is near game-ruining - and I’m not one to complain about this stuff. I’ve not experienced such terrible framerate and screen-tearing issues in a long time. It was to the point that it was affecting my swing timing, which is where you have a real problem. Then I discovered an option to disable DoF in the menu and that pretty much saved the game (from a gameplay point of view), but the issues were still extreme. It’s not really acceptable, but appears typical for Unity games.
DLC required - When you boot the game up and go to Seasons (single player mode) you are instantly told ‘Must buy the 10 euro DLC’. Huh. Okay, I’ll just play a round. Select the first course? ‘Must buy the 10 euro DLC’. Second course? Same. Third course? Same. No indication at all that this would be the case before selecting a course - it’s a crapshoot whether you’ll be allowed play or not. And one of the reasons I wanted to buy the game was to play Tropical courses, which I’d seen in images online. Locked behind DLC. Can’t overstate what a terrible first impression this made on me. Note that seasons mode is actually pretty good if you buy the DLC (Yes, I’m a sucker.)
Online interruptions - You’re playing a round by yourself (single player) and your internet hiccups. Kicked to menu. Are you fucking kidding me! You have to manually reconnect using an option in the game, then continue your round. When it happens the second time you’ll be looking for a refund.
Lack of control options - There is only one way to swing a club in The Golf Club, and that’s the ‘swing stick’ kind. I prefer to play on a three click basis. No reason to not offer that option, imo. With the swing stick, I had serious problems getting my shots to go over 85%, and the power would often seem completely arbitrary to me. This might have been fine if not for the…
Lack of tutorial / training mode of any sort - The game isn’t exactly hard to understand, but having no tutorial/tips/driving range is absurd. If had no idea why I was/am struggling so much to get a consistent power on the ball and there was nothing in the game to help me. Similarly, when I was struggling with putting early on some form of guide might have assisted. I know from playing golf (and golf games) how the lie or slope affects a shot, but your average gamer might not. No excuse to not have some kind of assistance in the game.
Commentary - The other issues I could understand. Game development is hard. But how the commentary could be this irritating blows my mind. Genuinely feels like they just had a random dev spout some stuff off the cuff into a mic. His attitude is all wrong, he barely seems to be taking it seriously at times. Like he’s bored as fuck. There’s no rough on the course to this guy., just ‘the deep stuff’. He doesn’t ring true as a caddy, or as a playing partner, or as a commentator. He’s just there to irritate the FUCK out of you. And yet due to the lack of music turning him off is almost worse. This was legitimately one of my biggest problems with the game. “That was going to be magnificent.. but it WASN’T.’ Yeah, fuck off.
Approach landing physics - There’s simply something off with how long the ball rolls after an approach. I’ve been playing golf my whole life, but I’ve never seen anything like how it happens in this game. Just half an hour ago - a nine iron, into a 8mph wind, landing on the fairway before an uphill green. It comes down almost totally vertical due to the loft and wind, bounces onto the front fringe of the green… then rolls through the green (up-fucking-hill!) into the rough at the back. This is an extreme example, but it happens again and again and again. Very frustrating. The problem isn’t there with wedges so much, but with 7-9 irons they just don’t roll like they should once they land.
Lack of personality to courses - Because the courses (even official ones) are all designed using the course designer, they all have that kind of ‘procedurally generated’ feel to them. There’s no unique touches to each of them, no personality. Because courses are the star of the show, this makes them a little dull. Playing Augusta, for example, is cool because it’s Augusta, but other than the layout (flawlessly done by some fan) it doesn’t look or feel like Augusta. Not the biggest issue, but something where McIlroy golf totally outclasses it. That local course my friend wanted to try? It was a loose facsimile of the real thing, sure, but without the houses and bushes and the like, that was all it was.
Course finder - A mess. With trophies that mean everyone will be publishing their crap, they really needed a better course finder than this. Filters would have been awesome, but you can only apply one at a time. So you can’t say ‘Show me tropical courses, medium difficulty or lower, rated 8 or above.’ Makes picking a course way more hassle than it should be.
Stats - Stats are core to golf. What courses have I played, what are my best scores on them etc etc. In this game I was astonished to find that it’s actually difficult to discover if you’ve played a course before. That’s absurd. Forget about finding out what your best scores on it are. But if you want a friend’s leaderboard, that’s quite easy to access. The stats menu they have is filled with crap that just doesn’t matter compared to a round history - stuff like ‘GIR%’ aggregated throughout every round. They got this badly wrong, but it’s a symptom of…
The menu - It’s a mess a lot of the time. Hard to find what you want - I still can’t figure out how to send a challenge to friends and I’ve played the game for 10+ hours. It’s also sticky and unresponsive. Often you’ll select something, but retain control over the menu, then select something else only for the laggy first selection to finally go through. Horrible.
I could go on, but as you can see I was hugely disappointed with this one.
Rory McIlroy PGA Tour
I’d never played the Tiger Woods series (it never appealed), and this game has taken a lot of shit online. So I wasn’t expecting very much. What I found was a game that is pretty disappointing in terms of single player, but that plays a perfectly reasonable game of golf.
(As you can see here, McIlroy is spectacular upclose, and especially in the morning / evening light, and utterly terrible from a distance once LoD kicks in, especially on links courses. This contrasts with TGC, which can look mediocre-to-good up close and looks pretty great far away. It's a question of taste as to visuals imo.)
The good:
Tee to green gameplay - Having set the options to ‘3 click swing - advanced’ McIlroy golf plays a hugely enjoyable game tee to green. Turning off the assists and just aiming from the tee, then bombing a 300 yard drive out there is hugely satisfying - and on advanced the slightest mistime will get you into tremendous trouble. Putting some extra loft on the ball and watching it spin back from 10 feet towards the cup works exactly as you’d expect. You feel like a pro golfer, it’s great. There’s nothing to really quibble with here - it’s an enjoyable game.
Options - The game could have more options, but you have enough to totally tailor the gameplay to whatever way you like it. That’s how it should be.
Presentation - The intros to each course are gorgeous and give you a sense of where you are and the character of the place. The between-hole shots are beautiful too. The commentary sounds exactly like it is on TV. It looks and feels pretty much like watching golf on TV, so fair play.
Course personality and selection - The courses are fantastic. They feel ‘designed’ in a way that TGC’s could never do, and there’s a good range now since free ones have been constantly added since launch. The US Open and British Open courses of both this year and last year are there, and having played them you’ll feel like you’ve been there. That’s essential. I bought the game to get a sneak peek at Oakmont (the next US Open) and the game delivered completely. And going back to Chambers Bay, it's spot on compared to what I watched. So I trust the game completely with the details. There are some other awesome courses that I love like Quail Hollow and TPC Sawgrass, and the fictional courses are spectacular, the stupid Battlefield one aside.
Mixed:
Commentary - The delivery is perfect, but the game isn’t smart enough to queue up the right call at the right time and it gets repetitive and confused as a result. Also the constant fellating of the cover star gets a little sickening - and I’m a Rory fan.
Putting - Just doesn’t feel anything as satisfying as TGC. The physics aren’t there on the green, and the camera angles are all wrong to begin with. The ball also rolls too quickly and stops too quickly - not giving you enough of that sense of a journey as you follow the ball and wonder if you got it right. It functions well enough to get by, but really needs massive improvement. It makes me laugh that McIlroy golf (the game) is great tee to green and weak on the greens - it really is made in the spirit of the man himself.
The bad:
Career mode - This is just garbage. The ‘limited holes’ idea is interesting, but only ends up limiting your chances. You don’t develop any rivalries, get any winnings… there’s nothing to it but a series of bland tournies without even any trophy presentations. This is what a lot of people are buying a ‘PGA Tour’ game for - the PGA Tour experience. And the game fails at this utterly miserably.
Stats - Just like TGC, it’s absurd that it doesn’t have your round history and best scores easily available. See my criticisms of that game here, because they all apply.
As for online, I must admit I didn’t try out the online mode here - as I said my friend had TGC, not McIlroy.
Conclusion::
Ultimately if you’re not a fan of golf, I’d find it really hard to recommend either. Both are disappointments in their own ways, but The Golf Clubs issues go directly to the heart of the gameplay, whereas McIlroy’s issues are largely those of content. If you just want to tee it up for a round here or there, McIlroy is the clear choice for me. That said, I’d be interested in a proper sequel for either of them.
I guess what I'm saying is... Save us, Everybody’s Golf! (Which has also looked poor from what we’ve seen so far. Oh well. I'll buy it. I'll buy them all.)
I’d also recently picked up Rory McIlroy PGA Tour, so the timing wasn’t perfect, but it was a good opportunity to compare the games. Also, I understood that both games had been out well over a year and had been updated with content and improvements so now seemed like a decent chance to try them out. Note that I’ve put in at least 35 rounds into each game at this point so I feel like I’ve a good feel for them.
The Golf Club
I’d heard a lot of great things about this game, so I was quite excited to play - though not excited about the 35 euro price when it has been a lot lower than that, but my friend wanted to play now, so whatever. What I got was a game with a couple of really good ideas wrecked by terrible performance and other issues.
Code:
[img]http://i.imgur.com/tFAh5jU.jpg[/img] [img]http://i.imgur.com/DPHpncD.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/Zeh1t2D.jpg[/img] [img]http://i.imgur.com/IZRxhv9.jpg[/img]The good:
Putting - Putting in TGC feels great. The ball moves slowly, so there’s plenty of time to anticipate whether the ball will break as you predicted or not - just like the real thing. Long putts snake this way and that across the surface on a fast green., which is fantastic fun. The green’s grid lines are just difficult enough to read to make it interesting, and putting the ball straight is easy enough, so like real putting it becomes about the read and the distance. It’s incredibly satisfying to see a long one fall, and disheartening to see a short one lip out. One issue with this system is that it’s way too hard to get a read on distance - as in how far you need to pull your putter back to send it a certain yardage - but this does tend to come with feel, and differs properly depending on the speed of the green. Overall this is the best part of the game by far.
Live online play - Playing against a friend without having to take turns is just great. Seeing their ghost ball as you hit yours is perfect. Watching a long putt of theirs drop stings, watching them take three shots to get out of the bunker will put you into gales of laughter. And best of all, it doesn’t take any longer than playing by yourself - choosing whether to wait for them or not is entirely up to you.
Amount of courses - You can play a different course for the rest of your life. Enough said. This is really the USP of the game right here.
Ghosts (asynchronous gameplay) - You can choose any ghost ball to play against as if you were playing them online. Basically every round anyone has ever played is stored by the game, and you can choose up to three to play against. This makes each round far, far more interesting than if you were just playing alone. You can choose a score that would be tough to beat, a medium one and an easier score, and then see how you get on. It’s always funny when the ‘easy’ score is killing you early, and you wonder how they shot what they did, only for them to suffer an obvious meltdown caused by one bad shot on the last couple of holes. Again, this is just like playing in a real foursome, and it’s great.
The bad:
Performance - I can’t get around it, the performance in this game is near game-ruining - and I’m not one to complain about this stuff. I’ve not experienced such terrible framerate and screen-tearing issues in a long time. It was to the point that it was affecting my swing timing, which is where you have a real problem. Then I discovered an option to disable DoF in the menu and that pretty much saved the game (from a gameplay point of view), but the issues were still extreme. It’s not really acceptable, but appears typical for Unity games.
DLC required - When you boot the game up and go to Seasons (single player mode) you are instantly told ‘Must buy the 10 euro DLC’. Huh. Okay, I’ll just play a round. Select the first course? ‘Must buy the 10 euro DLC’. Second course? Same. Third course? Same. No indication at all that this would be the case before selecting a course - it’s a crapshoot whether you’ll be allowed play or not. And one of the reasons I wanted to buy the game was to play Tropical courses, which I’d seen in images online. Locked behind DLC. Can’t overstate what a terrible first impression this made on me. Note that seasons mode is actually pretty good if you buy the DLC (Yes, I’m a sucker.)
Online interruptions - You’re playing a round by yourself (single player) and your internet hiccups. Kicked to menu. Are you fucking kidding me! You have to manually reconnect using an option in the game, then continue your round. When it happens the second time you’ll be looking for a refund.
Lack of control options - There is only one way to swing a club in The Golf Club, and that’s the ‘swing stick’ kind. I prefer to play on a three click basis. No reason to not offer that option, imo. With the swing stick, I had serious problems getting my shots to go over 85%, and the power would often seem completely arbitrary to me. This might have been fine if not for the…
Lack of tutorial / training mode of any sort - The game isn’t exactly hard to understand, but having no tutorial/tips/driving range is absurd. If had no idea why I was/am struggling so much to get a consistent power on the ball and there was nothing in the game to help me. Similarly, when I was struggling with putting early on some form of guide might have assisted. I know from playing golf (and golf games) how the lie or slope affects a shot, but your average gamer might not. No excuse to not have some kind of assistance in the game.
Commentary - The other issues I could understand. Game development is hard. But how the commentary could be this irritating blows my mind. Genuinely feels like they just had a random dev spout some stuff off the cuff into a mic. His attitude is all wrong, he barely seems to be taking it seriously at times. Like he’s bored as fuck. There’s no rough on the course to this guy., just ‘the deep stuff’. He doesn’t ring true as a caddy, or as a playing partner, or as a commentator. He’s just there to irritate the FUCK out of you. And yet due to the lack of music turning him off is almost worse. This was legitimately one of my biggest problems with the game. “That was going to be magnificent.. but it WASN’T.’ Yeah, fuck off.
Approach landing physics - There’s simply something off with how long the ball rolls after an approach. I’ve been playing golf my whole life, but I’ve never seen anything like how it happens in this game. Just half an hour ago - a nine iron, into a 8mph wind, landing on the fairway before an uphill green. It comes down almost totally vertical due to the loft and wind, bounces onto the front fringe of the green… then rolls through the green (up-fucking-hill!) into the rough at the back. This is an extreme example, but it happens again and again and again. Very frustrating. The problem isn’t there with wedges so much, but with 7-9 irons they just don’t roll like they should once they land.
Lack of personality to courses - Because the courses (even official ones) are all designed using the course designer, they all have that kind of ‘procedurally generated’ feel to them. There’s no unique touches to each of them, no personality. Because courses are the star of the show, this makes them a little dull. Playing Augusta, for example, is cool because it’s Augusta, but other than the layout (flawlessly done by some fan) it doesn’t look or feel like Augusta. Not the biggest issue, but something where McIlroy golf totally outclasses it. That local course my friend wanted to try? It was a loose facsimile of the real thing, sure, but without the houses and bushes and the like, that was all it was.
Course finder - A mess. With trophies that mean everyone will be publishing their crap, they really needed a better course finder than this. Filters would have been awesome, but you can only apply one at a time. So you can’t say ‘Show me tropical courses, medium difficulty or lower, rated 8 or above.’ Makes picking a course way more hassle than it should be.
Stats - Stats are core to golf. What courses have I played, what are my best scores on them etc etc. In this game I was astonished to find that it’s actually difficult to discover if you’ve played a course before. That’s absurd. Forget about finding out what your best scores on it are. But if you want a friend’s leaderboard, that’s quite easy to access. The stats menu they have is filled with crap that just doesn’t matter compared to a round history - stuff like ‘GIR%’ aggregated throughout every round. They got this badly wrong, but it’s a symptom of…
The menu - It’s a mess a lot of the time. Hard to find what you want - I still can’t figure out how to send a challenge to friends and I’ve played the game for 10+ hours. It’s also sticky and unresponsive. Often you’ll select something, but retain control over the menu, then select something else only for the laggy first selection to finally go through. Horrible.
I could go on, but as you can see I was hugely disappointed with this one.
Rory McIlroy PGA Tour
I’d never played the Tiger Woods series (it never appealed), and this game has taken a lot of shit online. So I wasn’t expecting very much. What I found was a game that is pretty disappointing in terms of single player, but that plays a perfectly reasonable game of golf.
Code:
[img]http://i.imgur.com/hI1d9UX.jpg[/img] [img]http://i.imgur.com/TRqAD9A.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/Rvr13UV.jpg[/img] [img]http://i.imgur.com/Zwuhc5d.jpg[/img]The good:
Tee to green gameplay - Having set the options to ‘3 click swing - advanced’ McIlroy golf plays a hugely enjoyable game tee to green. Turning off the assists and just aiming from the tee, then bombing a 300 yard drive out there is hugely satisfying - and on advanced the slightest mistime will get you into tremendous trouble. Putting some extra loft on the ball and watching it spin back from 10 feet towards the cup works exactly as you’d expect. You feel like a pro golfer, it’s great. There’s nothing to really quibble with here - it’s an enjoyable game.
Options - The game could have more options, but you have enough to totally tailor the gameplay to whatever way you like it. That’s how it should be.
Presentation - The intros to each course are gorgeous and give you a sense of where you are and the character of the place. The between-hole shots are beautiful too. The commentary sounds exactly like it is on TV. It looks and feels pretty much like watching golf on TV, so fair play.
Course personality and selection - The courses are fantastic. They feel ‘designed’ in a way that TGC’s could never do, and there’s a good range now since free ones have been constantly added since launch. The US Open and British Open courses of both this year and last year are there, and having played them you’ll feel like you’ve been there. That’s essential. I bought the game to get a sneak peek at Oakmont (the next US Open) and the game delivered completely. And going back to Chambers Bay, it's spot on compared to what I watched. So I trust the game completely with the details. There are some other awesome courses that I love like Quail Hollow and TPC Sawgrass, and the fictional courses are spectacular, the stupid Battlefield one aside.
Mixed:
Commentary - The delivery is perfect, but the game isn’t smart enough to queue up the right call at the right time and it gets repetitive and confused as a result. Also the constant fellating of the cover star gets a little sickening - and I’m a Rory fan.
Putting - Just doesn’t feel anything as satisfying as TGC. The physics aren’t there on the green, and the camera angles are all wrong to begin with. The ball also rolls too quickly and stops too quickly - not giving you enough of that sense of a journey as you follow the ball and wonder if you got it right. It functions well enough to get by, but really needs massive improvement. It makes me laugh that McIlroy golf (the game) is great tee to green and weak on the greens - it really is made in the spirit of the man himself.
The bad:
Career mode - This is just garbage. The ‘limited holes’ idea is interesting, but only ends up limiting your chances. You don’t develop any rivalries, get any winnings… there’s nothing to it but a series of bland tournies without even any trophy presentations. This is what a lot of people are buying a ‘PGA Tour’ game for - the PGA Tour experience. And the game fails at this utterly miserably.
Stats - Just like TGC, it’s absurd that it doesn’t have your round history and best scores easily available. See my criticisms of that game here, because they all apply.
As for online, I must admit I didn’t try out the online mode here - as I said my friend had TGC, not McIlroy.
Conclusion::
Ultimately if you’re not a fan of golf, I’d find it really hard to recommend either. Both are disappointments in their own ways, but The Golf Clubs issues go directly to the heart of the gameplay, whereas McIlroy’s issues are largely those of content. If you just want to tee it up for a round here or there, McIlroy is the clear choice for me. That said, I’d be interested in a proper sequel for either of them.
I guess what I'm saying is... Save us, Everybody’s Golf! (Which has also looked poor from what we’ve seen so far. Oh well. I'll buy it. I'll buy them all.)