Rory Mcllroy PGA Tour Xbox One Review

Rory Mcllroy PGA Tour Review

A lot has happened with the EA Sports PGA franchise, they brought in Tiger Woods he carried the flame for years, and then he got caught getting ‘Birdies’ outside of the course if you know what I mean *wink wink*. They tried to just go with the events as the main focus with the Masters and then the Ryder Cup but they seemed to fail to win the audience over, so move over world, EA has a new man in the name of Rory Mcllroy he is fast becoming the man in the sport of golf and it’s no surprise why.

The game gives you a prologue to learn how the new features work, there are a few new ones none in terms of controls just the way you zoom in and out of your upcoming shot and how you move the cursor to dictate where you want the ball to go.

In the prologue you also get to control the cover man in his attempt the win the US open, it starts off real easy with the game telling you where to put the cursor to make sure your shot goes in but then you put all that you’ve learned into the last three holes and god is it hard. The putting is completely different, gone are the days where we have colours on the green stating where it is sloped and where it is uphill, we now have this long white line which shows the direction to putt but it doesn’t tell the user if its up or downhill this is a major change, well for me as it will take a lot of getting used to to master.

They have added a new feature where you have the cursor of where the ball will possibly end up if done correctly but there is also a blue trajectory that determines the wind effect and any obstacles.

There are three options of control in PGA Tour, The popular ‘arcade’ which uses the left or right analog stick (very hard to go wrong here as the power is pre set for you)

The ‘three click’ start, backswing, forward swing, harder as you need to hit the markers for the perfect swing and finally ‘Tour’ an advanced mode in which the player pulls back on an analog stick to backswing, and push back forward for follow-through. This is the precision and most challenging of all 3 as the title would suggest and to top it off in Tour mode, users also cannot zoom in on the hole.

The game visually is stunning it captures that event feel when on a play now or an event with the roar from the crowd when you hit a tidy tee shot or hit a great birdie/eagle, even when you’re in the rough the grass parts when you swing back however the grass on the green and the fairway look really mediocre like they belong on the original Xbox.

As I mentioned Bose provide the sound and when you power up that ball on the tee shot the speakers will be tested good god, it was unexpected but so satisfying to hit a 350+ yard tee shot off on the amazing TPC at Sawgrass, the courses are authentic with real weather changes and live animals on the course, now i don’t mean it will effect the game at least I don’t think it will but i’ve seen deer and crocodiles lurking in the backgrounds and actually moving with adds to the realism. The character visuals on first hand look were weird, they looked to cartoonish and unfinished but after you play for a few hours they look normal, maybe my eyes but they looked bloody weird. My pro had more of a realistic looking face than the actual pros which baffled me, but still was limited to a handful of hair styles and around 10 colors, another thing that really had me scratching my head was i couldn’t remove facial hair, on any of the heads available.

“Gone are the days of having a union jack polo shirt and bright pink punk style hair, very professional is the approach now”

You have the usual Pro career feature which allows you to create your pro from scratch…well sort of, you are very limited here in what you can do, gone are the days of having a union jack polo shirt and bright pink punk style hair, very professional is the approach now, you really don’t have much to go with unfortunately, they used to have the game face but it never really locked on and worked I always ended up looking like Saruman from lord of the rings..weird comparison I know.

During the pro career you have the option to enter events and only complete 5 to 6 holes each day after a few events I found this strange as i was speeding through the events then i had a little look at the course options and there it was the ability to play the full course. This was really strange shouldn’t they give you the option at the start? why is it hidden in the options? then i realised my first full round on an event in Boston and i was -14 compared to the -4 if i was on the shorter option, what it does is give you a realistic approach. One more thing that was really good is as you progress sponsors sign you up to their label and supply you with attire to walk the course in from the likes of EA Sports (??) Nike and many more.

You can also set a small back story for your character from Child Prodigy to Ex-Instructor the commentators pick up on these and it makes the commentary more bearable, this has always been a pain the backside for me with ANY EA Sports games or sports games in fact but this year commentary was really good and works well, don’t get me wrong there are points where you will scream at the screen for the fella to shut the hell up but on the whole much more enjoyable this time out.

The skill sets for your golfer have changed as well the days have passed where you create a golfer and have 100 skill points to spend, you now you have specific skill sets which focus on specific areas, strength is all about power and how you strike the ball, finesse is your approach play and how you reach the green these are a few, you unlock more as you progress and as you rank up you gain the ability to have more than one set active on your golfer. After each event your individual skills upgrade automatically which results on your overall level as a golfer. I found this a little annoying as I like to focus on what I want to improve and not have someone dictate what should be improved. As a pro you have a rank which unlocks new clubs and attire this is your overall level similar to the level of soldier you are in battlefield or call of duty for example.

Nightclub challenge is a new feature where the courses have various challenges for you to complete with catchy music to boot this is a cool new feature that they have included, amongst this feature you have the ability to unlock more golfers to add to the very small list of current golfers available, I was very disappointed with the lack of golfers to choose from and the lack of major golf courses to use, there around 15 golfers to use and about 10 courses (see below) now for a game that is around the 27gb mark you’d think it will have more of a choice. There are no legends to use so we can’t create our fantasy matches either.

• TPC at Sawgrass
• TPC Boston
• TPC Scottsdale (Pre Order Bonus)
• St Andrews
• Whistling Straits
• Bay Hill Club and Lodge
• Royal Troon
• Wolf Creek
• Chambers Bay

Also the fantasy courses

• Coyote Falls
• Parcel Storm
• Lighthouse Pointe
• Wetlands
• The Predator

Online offers nothing new at all, in fact it lacks any atmosphere whatsoever, now I know that mentioned before about the annoying commentary but I still want to hear something, it does work well with all players able to go at the same time, now I don’t mean six golfers all teeing off at the same time like at a driving range, you can’t see each other you’re basically playing the hole on your own and at the right side of the screen you see the overall score. I did find this very boring as like I said there was no atmosphere, no crowd, no announcers all I heard was the ball being struck. You do have the option to have ranked matches which will get your blood pumping a bit more and Online tournaments but apart from that nothing else. I’d loved to of had the Nightclub challenge with an online feature as it would be really fun.

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