EA Sports PGA Tour is the developer’s first return to golf since 2015.
The aim of this new entry in the series was to provide fans with the most realistic golf game to date.
This includes painstakingly mapping and recreating golf courses down to the last detail.
Compared to its competitor PGA Tour 2K, EA Sports’ version offers a more intuitive way to drive the ball.
Your club is controlled via the left analogue stick, which you move in the same direction as the shot bar, and swing it back down.
Direction is chosen with the D-pad, and you can also affect the ball – such as creating a curve shot – with the right stick.
This finer form of movement can be ignored by beginners, but allows experts to focus more on precision.
You can also bypass the basic setup and choose the direction of your shot and which iron you want to use.
On a tactile level, this gives you the feeling that you are truly hitting a ball across the course, and your success will teach you how to adjust for the future.
The shooting simulation is rarely as accurate as you hope, but that is where the skill lies.
It deliberately doesn’t account for wind direction or the slope of the course, which is where your judgment comes in.
These factors combine to make every hole feel fresh, even if you are attempting the same course multiple times.
Studying the course and the weather conditions to design your shot, is at least as much fun as the execution itself.
Something that needs improvement, however, is the onboarding for new players.
The beginning of the game offers no tutorial, and you are only given explanation in the challenge modes.
Even then the game requires a good knowledge of the basics of golf, which it takes for granted.
This is not ideal for attracting curious new players to the game, and also for those who haven’t played a PGA Tour since 2015.
The steep learning curve aside, it does offer a very deep level of customisation, including the skill level of the AI, and added assists and challenges for players.
There will be 30 courses available on day one, and each one offers a different level of challenge, as well as the obvious differences to each hole.
PGA Tour also offers a variety of modes, including challenges based on historical and current events, sponsor tests for exclusive equipment, and career mode, which features everything from juniors up to the PGA Tour itself.
There are also RPG-style elements, where your rewards and experience can be traded in for upgrades and special abilities.
These don’t only apply to Career Mode, but to Quick Play and Multiplayer modes as well.
There are microtransactions, but the currency you can buy can also be easily earned in game.
The only issue is that the game uses the same currency to upgrade your skills as it does for cosmetics.
The biggest surprise was just who was, and wasn’t, included in the roster of professional players.
You won’t find Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, likely due to contractual obligations, but this is obviously a huge blow to the game.
More controversial than this is that LIV players are included despite being banned from the real-life tour.
One of the major downsides is that the camera can be a struggle.
There are times when you can’t see the shot loading bar if you are too close to the boundary.
The grid on the ground when you come up to putt can also obscure the hole, making things difficult.
EA Sports PGA Tour’s success will live or die on how well it keeps up with updates as time goes on.
Adding in new courses and players, as well as listening to players’ feedback, will be vital to seeing the series grow.
As of today, EA Sports PGA Tour is a very solid starting point for the franchise, and one that allows EA Sports to get back in the game.
Written by Paolo Sirio and Georgina Young on behalf of GLHF.
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