PGA Tour 2K21 Review

I really like golf games for some reason. I don’t particularly like golf, it’s not my favorite sport, I’ll watch the Masters but I don’t like golf more than say, basketball. However, golf video games have usually been pretty good. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 was my favorite golf game, if only for the courses, and the Team Tour mode, which feels very arcade-esque, and involves beating various fictional and real professional golfers in different modes to add them to your team, and I spent days a few years ago to add everyone to the roster. Then, in 2017, Everybody’s Golf took the mantle, with it’s old school charm and beautiful graphics and incredibly fun courses. In 2019, I purchased The Golf Club 2019, by HB Studios, the first game in the Golf Club series with the PGA Tour license and found it fun, but lacking in certain areas. HB Studios gained the full PGA Tour branding and 2K rebrand and came out of the 2 year development cycle with PGA Tour 2K21. Did it improve on previous entries, let’s find out shall we?

PGA Tour 2K21 builds upon a solid foundation forged by HB Studios since The Golf Club came out all the way back in 2014. Actually, HB Studios in general has an…eclectic history in sports game development, with their past work being mostly latter day PS2 sports games, like versions of NBA Live 08 and Madden NFL 12 for the PS2, as well as the older titles, like EA Sports’ Cricket and Rugby games. But, The Golf Club games have steadily been growing better and better throughout the years and this is just the latest step forward for the series. Let’s take a look at where the series stands at this point in time and whether it takes the title of my favorite golf game!

One of the complaints that I had about The Golf Club 2019 was that it wasn’t very accessible. The swing timing was very rigid, it didn’t really feel very fun or satisfying to make contact with the ball, and I just was not very good as a result of that. Now, here in 2K21, it is way easier to swing and get a good swing because of the added options, as you can see by this action shot here:

It’s a little off to the right, but you get the idea

Of course, the standout feature, the number one back of the box selling point is the inclusion of the actual players on the PGA Tour, like Tony Finau, Jim Furyk and Bryson Dechambeau. The actual extent of your involvement however, is limited. You see them on the course in PGA Tour Career mode via replays of their various shots, and as rivals in said career mode, but that’s about it!

If they were to integrate it further, say through playing in groupings, like in actual golf and checking their scores that way, then it would be pretty cool, but as it stands right now, it’s very limited. It’s something that’s nice to have but it doesn’t detract from the experience if it is absent. The main mode of the game is the PGA Tour career mode as I mentioned earlier. It’s this game’s answer to the MyCareer mode seen in the NBA 2K games, but with more customization of your character allowed than in those games. Additionally, a new feature present in this version is club stats, which allow you to get more power, or have more of an ability to get a full and accurate swing. Of course, always being one to strive for more distance, I chose the Bridgestone driver, which allows for a minimum driving distance of 312 yards:

And here are the rest of the clubs in my bag, if you want to take a look:

Also carrying over from The Golf Club 2019 is the ability to choose what your character wears in a particular round of a tournament. So, I went with this setup in the first round:

Why did I go with this in particular? It’s simple: I thought it would be funny to just crush a golf course while looking like I just rolled out of bed! I honestly look like I’m perpetually late to every first round and haven’t had time to warm up! But I have been thinking lately and I have come to this conclusion: this can also be used for intimidation. Imagine you, you’re Bryson Dechambeau for a second. You want to live to 140 or whatever, you’re having a great first round, you go to the back nine, and you see this guy way, WAY out in front, and his lead is widening. All the while, he’s put no effort into his outfit, or at least that’s what it looks like. No polo, no golf shoes. Not even slacks! He’s out here in shorts! SHORTS! AND HE’S GOT THIS HUGE LEAD ON YOU! Your resolve is shaken. “How can I be losing to this man”?, you think to yourself. You think, “at least he’s not wearing the red polo, like Tiger!” And no, he’s not going to trot out the red polo. He wants to blaze his own trail. Then, on the second day, he shows up in this:

If your chances of winning were dead after the first round, he shows up to bury them in the final round, and yes I said final round. Whereas most golf events consist of four rounds, I shortened it to two rounds, in the PGA Tour. When my character was on the amateur tour, it was one round but once I got to the PGA Tour, I extended it to two rounds. And I came out of the gate, DOMINATING the circuit. I won a ton of events, usually by a margin that wasn’t particularly close. It was like Louis Oosthuizen’s 2010 British Open domination, except literally almost all the time. It might have had something to do with this:

Yeah, the course difficulty is something that I really like, because in The Golf Club 2019, there was only a difficulty selector for your opponent, but the conditions difficulty is a lifesaver. As the name would suggest, it dictates conditions such as wind and the speed and firmness of greens on the course. This often leads to moderate or heavy winds for at least one round, adding difficulty. But you need to know the tragedy of the 2020 Tour Championship before we can move on.

The Tour Championship is held at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, Georgia. Long recognized as the home course of legendary golfer Bobby Jones, this is by far one of the hardest courses in the game, and it’s not like Riviera CC; it’s not fun-difficult. This course just beats you down. I rallied on the back 9 of the final round, but it was too late. Adam Scott had too big of a lead to overcome, and I finished as a runner up. He was the FedEx Cup champion just like that. I’m currently working to avenge my loss, mount a comeback and anoint myself as the best in the game.

I wrote the above paragraph last week as I was still in my second season on the PGA Tour, and the second season went as well as a revenge tour could, really. I didn’t lose any of the events I entered in and yes, I did only miss about 4 events. But I did it, I took home the FedEx Cup:

Contrary to what the caption says, however, there is no next season. It just boots you back to the start of the career where you pick which level to start at. Which is disappointing, as beyond this, there really isn’t much in the way of offline competition, even The Golf Club 2019 had offline societies. As I have no friends who are interested in playing offline, I’ll just leave it at that I guess. It died with a bit of a whimper, which is a gigantic letdown.
Other than that, there really isn’t much to say in regards to this game. The only thing that I haven’t touched on very much are the courses. They’re alright, I guess. There are some great ones in there, like the aforementioned Riviera CC, which is difficult, but very enjoyable, with some fun little quirks, like a bunker in the middle of a Par 3 green. The first hole is one of my favorite opening holes in the game. A heavily elevated tee shot makes for an awesome downhill drive where you can get very good distance, making for a short second shot and an opportunity for a birdie if you play it right. Of course, there are the major courses, of which Vaquero Valley is my favorite, because of all the elevation changes. My only critique with these is that they don’t rotate when you go to career mode, for the different majors, like how the US and British open do in real life. They just stay static. I’ve tried my hand at creating my own course but it proved too difficult with too steep of a learning curve for me. But some of the created courses are very well done, with a ton of effort put into them. It’s fun to see just how far people stretch what’s available to them. I might create a course myself and play it, and maybe write a post about it…we will see.

PGA Tour 2K21 is probably my favorite golf game right now. It’s solid enough to keep me entertained for hours, and is a good foundation for improvement within the series. That being said, there’s still some things that hold it back, namely the lack of courses and single player only modes, plus lackluster graphics. However, it overcomes those flaws by being the most fun and accessible non-arcade golf game I have ever played!