PGA Tour 2K21 Review

 

Developer HB Studios, who brought you the golf club series of games has teamed up with publisher 2K to bring their golf games to a much bigger audience

Even though this games has been re-branded to be PGA Tour 2K21 it still holds true to golf club series origins and this is both a good and a bad thing.

If you are new to the channel, this is where we break games down to their four main components, Graphics, Sound, Game-play and Replay Value to give you an overall score, before we start, make sure you hit that like button and subscribe to see all our reviews, let's get into it.

Graphics:

At times the graphics in this game can look really good, the grass, trees and water are what you expect them to be, but its nothing special and you could argue that the now six-year-old game Rory Mcilroy Golf looks just as good if not better, which is disappointing.

The graphics in this game might be held back by one of the games best features, the course editor but we'll get to that later

One thing that really annoyed me is the players swing animation, considering how important the golfer is to a golf game I would have thought they could have spent more time making this animation look smoother and more lifelike, its very robotic.

On the plus side the load times are pretty good and once you're in the game you'll hardly notice the transition between holes, which is always a good thing.

Score: 8.0

Sound:

I'll be honest here, I tried to leave the commentary on in this game for as long as I could but it is really dull.

Commentary is a hard thing to get right in sports games, but this is just bad, it often blabbers on about something long after you've moved on, or it will say that your putt has a chance to go in after you've already missed.

And for some strange reason the commentators in this game kept referring to me as “They” which sounded really weird.

The balls striking is fine and sounds natural, the score is passable but you could easily mute this game and not miss out on anything.

Score: 7.5

Gameplay:

This game is designed to be a golf simulator and the difficulty of swinging the club can be dialed up and down depending on how much you want to test yourself, you can work your way through countless tournaments based on real-world events, strangely though you can complete against famous PGA players but you can't play as them, which seems like an oversight.

You can compete online and in societies, you can pick and choose what clubs you want to play with but there is no progression for you're character here, Your score depends on your ability to swing the club.

By far the best part of this game is the golf course editor, you have the freedom to create whatever your heart desires, thousands of courses have been ported over from the older Golf Club games, and there are so many courses added online every day that you could play a new courses every day for years.

Score: 8.5

Replay Value:

With the PGA Tour, multiple difficulty levels, online modes and custom courses this game has a stack of replay value.

It seems to me like they've built themselves a game as a service here that can be built upon, although its almost certain that 2k will dish out one of these games every year forcing you to update or be left behind.

Like most sports games, playing online and with your friends is where you'll have the most fun, so as long as the servers are up, there's fun to be had.

Score: 9

Summary:

I've really struggled with this game, there's a really good game in here somewhere, but its held back by nagging bugs and strange design choices, like how the game wants to show you an action replay every time the ball lips out of the hole, I don't know about you but I'm not overly keen to re-watch shots I've missed.

And don't get me started on the cutaways mid-tournament to watch other players highlights, fortunately, you can turn that one off in the setting.

If you're after a pure golf simulator then you'll like this game if you wanted something a little more arcadey then you'll have to beg EA sports for another Tiger Woods games, but don't hold your breath.

Thanks for watching, don't forget to smash that Like button, make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss any of our videos, until next time, this has been an LTD Games review.

Graphics: 7.5

Sound: 7

Gameplay: 8

Replay Value: 9.0

Overall: 8.0