Review: The Golf Club PS4

The Golf Club is a visually stunning golf simulation that features procedurally generated courses, a fully featured course editor

Pros:

• Graphics, No denying there beauty. The game does the golf sim genre a a service by providing some of the best looking courses from around the world. The water looks real, The shadows are natural and the player animations are really well done.
• Asychronous online play which players of Everybodys Golf will recognise. Players take there shots and in essence play on there own but can see the other players position, Ball and shot distance.
• Twin stick control system where you need to flick the right stick back then forward to hit it. You do have a option to tweak the shot like add spin, lower the trajectory or add more power.
• Has 4 player offline.
• Small file size considering how much is in the game. It weighs in just under a gig at 950mb.
• Play modes are one off match,tournaments,the open or user created matches.
• Online leader boards for each individual course.
• You are always connected to the social hub which is integrated into the game. You can send/recieve game invites, Look at other players stats and check out your rank with friends and the rest of the world.
• If you are feeling particularly anti social then you an go into offline mode but you wont be able to access much of the content.
• No real soundtrack but an excellent ambient sound effects selection from birds cheeping to bushes shuffling.
• Powerful course editor that allows you to do anything. Pick a them,number of holes and then jump in and tweak it. You can mess around with hills,trees, the green and just about anything else you can think of including setting the par limit.
• Save,share and download other player created courses.
• Every course will have a series of stats on them for you telling you, How many times you have played it, overall rating based off player ratings and your best score.
• You can favourite courses and create your own play list as it were. You can see your friends favorites as well.
• Several camera options are available to you. You can fly around the course and see whats ahead or you can change the angle when on the green to improve your view. You can also do an overhead view for lining up shots.
• The green goes with the now traditional grid system. Arrows will tell you the flow of the land.
• Fast loading game between holes.
• Full commentary with tips given, stats update and general performance.
• Full Platinum trophy.
• Practice area to hone your skills.
• You can customize your golfer to a degree, Change outfit,gloves etc..

Cons:

• No touchpad integration.
• No proper dedicated tutorial section.
• Hard to jusdge power and aim with the twin stick control.
• No alternative control schemes so anyone expecting a bar where you just press X a few times will be dissapointed.
• Voice over/commentary is repetitive and does come across as sarcastic and likes to take a pop at you a lot of the time.
• Victim of its own success with the course editor. It is so powerful and in depth that it loses a lot of its fluidity and becomes a confusing and over complicated.
• The price is a bit high and especially so without any demo.

In Summary, The game is good but I found with the commentator always having a pop, Lack of friends on it and a nightmare course editor that I should hate it. Thing is I did but for some reason I cannot stop coming back to it. Maybe its the chilled out ambiance of hearing the birds chirping as I sink the shot. The game has a draw that is hard to put my finger on and its one of my most layed games at the moment. It does have a few problems and could really benefit from a few new control methods to make it more accessible to new players. That said it is a sim game, Not an arcade game but still. Its worth a look if you are a golf fan but for the price you may feel hesitant so hopefully we get a demo. In short the game looks stunning, has a good social infrastructure but lack of decent controls and odd design choices stop it being an instant buy.