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The Golf Club 2019 feat. PGA TOUR [PS4/XB1/PC]

mattmid said:
That's disappointing to hear about the difficulty level permanently setting fairways and greens to firm-and-fast. That really is lame. A big part of the fun/challenge is varying fairways and greens, particularly if it's round to round as well as course to course.
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When changing course conditions, it makes a huge difference to gameplay (in my experience). I've found it very difficult on the harder difficulties to judge shots because the aim marker is nowhere near where the ball is going to end up - it's going to go much further, the ball never stops rolling, and - oh, I forgot to mention... Harder difficulties also lock you into "windy" conditions for every round, too.

Combine all of that (adding X yards because it's fast, subtracting X yards because of the wind, ruling out using clubs above a 9-iron because the ball will NEVER STOP ROLLING if you don't)... and it's really difficult to get right. But the conditions don't change, so it's the same calculations every time, so I'm never "shocked" into realising I suddenly need to club up/down due to the weather, or even the course location. I say "location" because...

EA's Rory McIlroy game is trash IMO (when putting the ball, it's about two seconds between the ball moving and stopping dead, the physics are in fast-forwards and it's horrible)... But, every course has different physics values dependent on the course and the location. So a damp* St. Andrews will mean the ball stops much more easily than a sunny TPC at Sawgrass.

*Which reminds me... TGC doesn't have rain!

That doesn't happen in TGC's career. The reason the TGC guys have done this is because it's unrealistically easy, in normal conditions, to stop the ball exactly where the aim marker is on approach shots. But... Should that not make them think that the aim marker is too precise, or that it's too easy to dial-in the perfect swing/spin?

I'd love the shock of going from fast fairways to slow fairways (and vice versa), and having to change my thinking as a result.

mattmid said:
I'd agree with all of that bar the graphics which look really good to me (maybe a PC/PS4 difference going on there??)
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I don't have the screenshots to hand, but buildings in the background of official courses (let alone the fake ones) are essentially huge white cubes. When you hit into the bushes, you can easily see the bushes are put together like this:

yN4CrD7.jpg

Compare the detail between the Rory McIlroy game and TGC 2019...
(I'm cherry-picking, of course, but it's a huge difference in-game.)

RM:
112-ea-sports-rory-mcilroy-pga-tour-screenshot-1434514703.jpg

112-ea-sports-rory-mcilroy-pga-tour-screenshot-1434515013.jpg

TGC:
screen1_grande.jpg

SetWidth800-the-golf-club-2019--screenshots-oct-2018-1.jpg
 
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The analogy to PES is complete with the no rain bit! Although I have set it to rain when playing St Andrews (or was the option just wet, can't recall, I haven't played around with it too much, just been doing the Career after getting the swing of it (see what I did there? :) ) I swear I did see some rain at some points, although the lighting appeared bright and my player had a shadow!

Surely it would be better to either remove the aim marker on higher difficulties or make it somewhat vague. I'm assuming raising the difficulty level also lowers the opponents scores in the tournaments? I've got as far as the first tournament on the Pro Tour and the winner had -6 but was one of only four who were under par after four rounds.

The more I think about it, it really is a PES situation isn't it? It does so many things right and then throws in some 'Konami logic' bits just for fun.

Still the gameplay is great and it fills a modern golf game void just fine for now. Hopefully it'll progress with real players and address the course conditions which I have to admit is pretty much a cop out to adjust difficulty.
 
Chris Davies said:
This was stealth-released yesterday after 2K have struck a deal with HB Studios. But I don't think we'll see the benefit of that investment until the next game.

Personally, I'm really disappointed with it. The graphics are PS3-era (other than the lighting), the ball rolls like it's on ice from time to time, and barely anything has changed since the previous game.

And yet it's still the best golf gameplay I've experienced.

I think it's the golf equivalent of PES...
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i'm very happy with this gameplay, smashing your driver or finessing your putter is great stuff. it's the best golf game out there, all the dummies out there giving it bad reviews are more focused on arcade golf. 2K should only make it better with there big bucks. This is my favorite course........ http://www.hb-studios.com/forum/index.php?topic=24102.0
 
Bond!JamesBond! said:
i'm very happy with this gameplay, smashing your driver or finessing your putter is great stuff. it's the best golf game out there, all the dummies out there giving it bad reviews are more focused on arcade golf. 2K should only make it better with there big bucks. This is my favorite course........ http://www.hb-studios.com/forum/index.php?topic=24102.0
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its the one i'm playing right now... but it got its faults!
have a look at what chris said in this thread. i second that (after i had a detailed look ingame about what he said).

its a fun game with some little flaws, imo! still its the one golf game i currently enjoy, especially when a mate is over and we play a round of 18!
 
i must say, i like TGC2 swing mechanics better, it's harder to hit straight shots, a game you really need to go to the driving range and practice your swing to par tough courses. In 2019 i can hit fairways all day, on hardest difficulty. It's not as sensitive as TGC2. I hope 2K doesn't turn it into another EA golf game. Easy to par even on very hard difficulty.
 
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Bond!JamesBond! said:
i must say, i like TGC2 swing mechanics better, it's harder to hit straight shots, a game you really need to go to the driving range and practice your swing to par tough courses. In 2019 i can hit fairways all day, on hardest difficulty. It's not as sensitive as TGC2. I hope 2K doesn't turn it into another EA golf game. Easy to par even on very hard difficulty.
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So do you want to revise your "all the dummies giving it bad reviews just want arcade golf" statement now, or...? ;)

It *is* arcade golf - maybe not as arcadey as other games, but still far too easy to hit the fairway every time (which you've just admitted yourself) - and the way they implement difficulty settings is as lazy as I've ever seen in a sports game.

It has potential but the devs seem to have lost their passion. When they interact with the community now, it feels like they're just fed up of being asked to make something more realistic. So I don't think it'll get any better.
 
Just came across this threa. I just purchased TW14 just for its diagonal swing mechanics and Masters authenticity. The GC certainly looks interesting however.
 
martyl2 said:
Just came across this threa. I just purchased TW14 just for its diagonal swing mechanics and Masters authenticity. The GC certainly looks interesting however.
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I think TW14 is a better game all-round (certainly if you take licensing, course selection and presentation into play). But it's nice to have a modern golf game, and the gameplay of TGC 2019 is designed to be tough as nails, if you choose the hardest settings.

The problem is, it's "fake difficulty". To keep scores from being ridiculous, they restrict club distance on the first two difficulties (which doesn't stop people scoring -19 on an 18-hole course because every swing is perfect), and on the hardest difficulty, wind is always 15mph+ and the greens are like glass. You can't stop a ball on anything other than a perfectly flat green - it will just roll for days, and it's infuriating to watch your perfectly hit shot roll 50ft and off the side of a green because of a very slight slope (and adding loft doesn't help it stick).

However, I appreciate that creating difficulty is a balancing act, and it does keep scores in master-clubs-only groups from being too silly (in most cases - but certainly not in all cases, e.g. flat courses present very little challenge).

You've also got 1,000s of user-created courses to play on - but bear in mind the majority are shite. There are 100+ truly great real-world courses that talented designers have built - and that's still plenty - but don't expect to search for any course in the world and get a perfect representation.

And the career mode... So many stupid oversights. You can't customise it in any meaningful way, so you play on a handful of licensed courses and then for the unlicensed events (which is the vast majority), you've got to play on the dev's own generic, repetitive courses (when ALL THE REAL COURSES EXIST in user-created form - you're just not allowed to swap them in, because that would break the PGA licensing agreement).

What you CAN do is create your own season, called a "custom season" or something like that, which has none of the bells-and-whistles of the "official" (yet mostly unlicensed) career mode. Then you can put in all the real event names and courses. But without the Q-School etc. from the "proper" career mode, what's the point? There isn't one.

In either mode, all the golfers are fake. You can edit their names (and I believe their appearance). However, you can't import a file (PES style) to replace all of them at once. There are HUNDREDS. And you can't see their skill level (without playing a few games first). Nor can you edit their skill (and nor does the game take into account different attributes, e.g. long game, short game etc., like Links did almost TWENTY FUCKING YEARS AGO). It would take an entire day to make them into genuine names - so I've never bothered. Far too time-consuming and for no reward.

Even with all these frustrations, it's the best golf game we've had in ages, and that's what kills me. It's like PES - it can do a ton of stupid little things wrong that would be a relatively quick fix, and be a frustrating experience in large parts, and yet still it manages to be the best choice we have. (And from the sounds of it, they won't be making any more.)

If you ever do get it - sign up to TGCTours.com to play in weekly online tournaments (with a league structure). By far the best thing about the game. Easy to join, progression is sorted for you (no pissing about having to enter your scores into the website or anything like that). Genuine competition based on your skill level. The guys who operate that place deserve to be employed by HB Studios.
 
Just bought this, fancied playing a golf game for some reason, must be getting bored :P.

Hoping that there's more depth than the last one I played (TGC1), where you just had to launch the ball at the flag with maximum loft and spin. It was more effective to play a flop shot from the fringe than a chip or putt most of the time. If you didn't score at least low-60s it was a poor round.
 
Just finished my first round, scored +13 :P. Did jump straight to the Master clubs after the tutorial though - glad to see it's nowhere near as easy as the first one was.
 
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