The sun is shining, the flowers are starting to open and it’s a long weekend. There’s no better time to experience the annual Augusta Masters tournament… from home, playing EA Sports PGA Tour. Although the event took place last weekend, golf players might be more interested in EA’s return to the world of golf games with the launch of the EA Sports PGA Tour.
While following this title closely (because I strongly believe that golf is one of the best sports to adapt to a video game, since it works very well in digital format), I also visited golf throughout this week, to be able to judge whether EA’s return to digital golf is something to celebrate or avoid.
My conclusion is that the release of this game is worth getting excited about if you are a fan of the sport. Don’t get me wrong, EA Sports PGA Tour isn’t perfect and has its flaws (I’ll get to that later), but overall it’s a very well-done golf title. It gets even better with its course selection, the best you could ask for.
EA has proclaimed from the rooftops that this game is “home of the majors” and for good reason. The men’s golf majors (Majors) are the most demanding and attractive tournaments in the world. They take place on the iconic and exclusive Augusta National, historic St. Andrews, sunny Southern Hills and 30 other non-exclusive courses that are part of the expansive PGA Tour Circuit (such as scenic Pebble Beach, bustling TPC Scottsdale, the Riviera Country Club complex, etc.). Whenever you golf at one of these places, you can’t help but feel like you’re in a place steeped in history. This feeling increases when the commentators continuously provide a multitude of informative facts about the history of golf or advice that can be useful to you during the game. Since the courses are created in detail, this title perfectly presents the challenge of having to master a PGA Tour level course.
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Because these fields were created using photogrammetry and other sophisticated techniques to digitally recreate them with pinpoint accuracy, it makes them appear to be real. The delicate irregularities of each green and each hole present challenges to overcome and each tree branch is an additional obstacle to overcome. Additionally, the perspective of the fairways and the location of the bunkers mean that hitting the ball with a driver can end in disaster. The atmosphere at each golf course is excellent: they have brilliant flora and attention to detail, proximity to bodies of water or the ocean, and huge crowds of fans who follow you to each tournament shouting for cheer you up. The reason EA chose not to release this title on next-gen consoles is obvious: fine detail is EA Sports PGA’s forte, but EA’s sports game creators still don’t know how. animate human faces. Without exaggeration, the characters are creepy, although this problem is already familiar to fans of FIFA, Madden and F1.
The gameplay presents a nice combination of depth and simplicity. If all you want is to play a little golf, you can skip all the different complex shot types and RPG systems and just play nine holes to see what score you can hit under par. If going deeper into your game is what interests you most, you can explore the different ways of hitting the ball down the fairway or dropping it onto the green from the rough.
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The dynamics themselves can be very difficult to understand and master. I won’t deny that the crude swing mechanics of the analog golf club have frustrated me countless times, especially on short shots where it’s too easy to launch the ball into the stratosphere. You have to make many mistakes to finally understand how everything works. The tutorial doesn’t help players much, but that’s precisely why EA has included different training and sponsorship challenges to help master the more specific shot types and mechanics needed to be a PGA Tour golfer. Each of them will give you experience, needed to level up, and more skill points to improve your golfer.
As far as the RPG genre goes, the career mode (where it’s more prominent) is excellent. The objective is to try to do your best in each of the PGA Tour season’s tournaments to improve your overall ranking and level up. So you can spend your skill points on increasing your golfer’s strength, putting technique, short game, and many other areas that fall into these broader categories (e.g. accuracy or control when putting). use of spoons and other golf clubs). The system allows you to see the improvement after each tournament. At the start of your career, it will be difficult for you to climb to 250th in the standings and be able to properly hit a short shot from more than two meters, but when you arrive in Augusta after a few months of the season, you will be able to hit a short shot over three meters with ease and you’ll be in the top 150 (or even higher) of the world rankings.
What impresses me the least about the game is the customization, as it ties into microtransactions. You cannot improve your golfer by buying a new club with real money, but you can buy upgrades to increase certain attributes of your clubs or stroke types, as well as buy tournament tickets. I’m disappointed that the only way to get new skins for the gym bag is to pay real money, because then there’s no free way to upgrade and change the appearance of the golfer. Not that I’m the number one fan of skins and looks, but it would be a huge plus if there were more options that weren’t related to premium currency and sometimes even (surprisingly) boxes to loot.
In addition, to play, it is necessary to be connected to EA’s servers in order to access most game modes, including Career mode. I honestly hate it and can’t understand why I have to connect a PlayStation Network account to EA account systems to only be able to play 75% of EA Sports PGA Tour.
Since I’m complaining, it’s the game’s menus and user interfaces, which are honestly very slow, unnecessarily complex and frustrating. It takes way too many buttons to get to something important, and trying to get a better angle of view by moving the camera around the track takes such a level of concentration and skill that in the end I almost preferred to film with the naked eye, just based on the information I received from where my golfer was. It’s a game, not real life, so it shouldn’t be necessary.
Despite this, the variety of game modes in EA Sports PGA Tour is impressive. In addition to Career Mode, where the goal is to become the ultimate golfer, and Quick Play, where you can play a series of quick games in slightly different styles (such as Best Ball, which pits two teams of two against each other, or Skins, where players compete for money in hole-by-hole play), there’s also Social, the unranked multiplayer mode, Competitive, the online simultaneous action mode where you see what make your rivals in real time (as if they were ghosts on the field) or Tournament, the most difficult competitive mode. If all that isn’t enough for you, private matches and challenges allow you to create your own tournaments and improve your skills, respectively.
While the game has some pretty weird bugs (like some lighting that changes your golfer’s hair color), overall EA Sports PGA Tour is a fun and entertaining golf game that excels at everything that matters most. : the dynamics of the game, the grounds and the experience . If you’re looking for a way to fully immerse yourself in the world of golf, watching the Masters and playing the EA Sports PGA Tour is a good idea. The only thing I recommend is to stay away from the store tab if you want to avoid major disappointment.