PGA Tour 2K21 Review

"On a Grand Tour"

Campaign

August 23, 2020 at 8:50pm
By Jason Stettner

This is a rather interesting and great golf simulation release. This title expands upon the core basis of The Golf Club series while going under the 2K Games branding. It continues with the PGA Tour branding as well that was present in the last entry within The Golf Club games. With that, it expands upon those mechanics in a number of great ways for a very solid and promising start to this new series.

First off there’s the career mode where you’re able to create a very custom character in order to compete. There really is just a wealth of character editing options here. You use them extensively in the game, so it makes sense. They have a number of different tour options that are officially named and based on big tournaments. This isn’t too expansive of a mode, and hopefully they explore this one further down the road. It does get the job done for the whole “PGA Tour” aspect of the game which is expected.

I thought the character customization was excellent as mentioned, I’m very impressed with that and in how you unlock new clothing options as well. That’s just a nice little extra to work towards. There’s also the option to just play now if you’d like to. The game directly integrates the built-in courses while allowing you to choose from the many options that others have created online. This game has a wealth of content to it in regards to what can be made and shared with the community.

You can just enjoy these custom courses, or build your own. They even have some legacy course support! These course editing systems are very intuitive, offer thousands of options for adjustments and really allow free creativity. They’re easy to adjust; test, save and then deploy for others to use. If single player isn’t entirely your thing there are many multiplayer options.

You can jump into the online clubs or societies if you want more organized play with others. If you’re looking for more direct action you can host private matches or even hop into matchmaking across a series of modes. This includes two versus two, head to head or even wagers for two to four players. Note that these options may be adjusted over time, but were present at the time of writing which was launch week.

Gameplay

This is a very well designed and visually appealing take on the sporting event. They have a lovely selection of courses present and many ways to of course take that aspect further through course creation. The presets are varied from luscious greens to some barren desolate deserts. You definitely get options, and fairly realistic ones at that too. Now, I would like some of the visual fidelity in the backdrop taken up a notch, but it really does look great.

The character models move fluidly, and offer many dynamic poses. This includes getting frustrated at a bad shot, or celebrating if you get just the right far away putt. There are a number of professionals included in this too, hopefully that roster gets expanded upon in future iterations as it does seem semi-light at the moment. Now, the crowds could use some more animation work, but they’re dense and varied in the backdrops which is good. The music is soft and used effectively, I also quite enjoyed the commentary presentation used in this one.

The controls are excellent, and offer layers of accessibility. I did very well at driving, but did have some issues putting at first. It’s definitely got a bit of a fine tuned aspect to it as you’ll need to grasp the mechanics well to be truly great at this. It can, as mentioned be quite accessible if you’re having any difficulty which is nice to see. They give many options for surveying, and preparing your shot. It’s impressive, dynamic and generally handled very well.

The Conclusion

PGA Tour 2K21 is a great golfing game, it delivers on content and many ways to expand what’s available further through excellent course creation tools. They really have delivered an all around package here that’s varied and fun to play. It’s great for playing alone, or for joining in with others.

It’s actually impressive just how much they’ve got here and it seems their work with The Golf Club has paid off with this new expansion upon those concepts. I would like to see career mode taken further down the road, as many parts of this were just excellent. The character customization is great, and the course creator options are excellent.

There’s a lot of potential for this series if they continue to expand, as this is a really grand take on the sport. It’s accessible for anyone to try out with fine tuned options for the more hardcore ones out there. It offers a lot of ways to play it, and it’s quite fun. Definitely an impressive package, that’s for sure. Golfing really doesn’t get much better than this.

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PGA Tour 2K21 Review on Xbox One X
Review Code Provided by 2K Games

Rating Overall: 8.2