PGA Tour 2K21 is a good game that delivers a spot-on golfing experience. It brings a variety of courses, great mechanics, and plenty of reasons to keep playing. If the presentation could have been improved it would have been the perfect golfing package. As it stands, if you’re looking for a good golfing experience than you got it.
Ah, golf. A game that has been around for centuries. It has survived the test of time, it has changed over the years and broke barriers, and it once launched South Park. Regardless of how you feel about the game, the video game version of golf is far more exciting and less frustrating than the real game, which will certainly help sell the idea of 2K taking over the PGA Tour license from EA.
If you remember beyond NBA 2K, the 2K gaming licenses, which at one time included baseball and football, always seemed to bring a balance of arcade experience with some real-world elements. Ultimately, what this meant was that you were going to get pressed to do better and to upgrade your players, but usually, the game never lost track of bringing some arcade design excitement to the experience. 2K generally wants you to jump right into a 2K sporting game without going Pro Evolution Soccer on your expectations. 2K sports games are generally easy to jump into and will test you in small amounts along the way. Believe me, unless you’re someone who enjoys crunching numbers, putting strategy to paper, toggling with insane line-ups to get the most out of your sporting experience, you’re going to find that 2K’s way of doing things seems a lot more fun. And it is, especially with PGA Tour 2K21.
Let me caution you, though. Just because a game is fun doesn’t mean that it’s perfect. I’ve had tons of fun with games that people hated because I found fun in them. If you need an example, look at God Hand. Loved the game and all its flaws because it was fun.
Anyway, I have found a lot of golfing fun with PGA Tour 2K21, but it’s not perfect.
Smashing Gameplay
The gameplay design, as stated at the beginning of this review, is of arcade flavor. This means that the controls are easy to get into and never get in the way of the game’s intended purpose — playing golf. You pull the left thumbstick down, push it up quickly, use the right thumbstick to steady your aim, and BOOM! Ball hit. You have a meter at the bottom of the screen that points out if you made contact too early (meaning you don’t pull your swing back far enough) and if you completely over-whack (not a word) the golf ball too much. It provides a sweet spot for bringing your club back and unleashing your hit. It’s arcade by design and it’s easy to get into the gameplay flow. If you have the game on automatic, which works well, then those things are your biggest worries, though aiming your ball to compensate for the wind direction/speed is a close second. Anyway, the control scheme makes it easy to get right into the game. It’s a ‘pop-in-a-quarter-and-hit-start’ arcade feel.
That is the first tier of gameplay design you run into, and it does get a bit more complicated from there.
If you want more control over your golf experience, the game does allow you to estimate shot distance, while manually trying to find the best club to get the job done. While it’s not unexpected that this is a secondary way of playing the game, I’m more impressed with how accurate the auto mode of this game can be. Is it perfect? No, not at all. There are times when you let the game control your club selection and it just absolutely gets it wrong. Either you come up short on a shot or you overshoot — regardless of how well you may have swung the club. Does it do a good job more than naught? Yes. There really wasn’t a moment where I thought that the auto mode of the game screwed me over on a consistent basis. The screw job was here and there, but not everywhere. Regardless, you can shift over to a more manual way of playing the game and it caters to a more strategic and involved player.
Beyond the manual and automatic part of the gameplay, the game does its best to push you along and encourage you to keep playing. How? Let me break it down into several categories you probably won’t read:
PGA Tour Card – While you’re playing the game and gathering XP, you eventually will get better at the game. The gameplay is built for you to start out awful and then slowly starts to teach you, whether you realize it or not. This is like game-based learning, where you don’t realize you’ve learned something until it’s too late. Early on, the game puts you in smaller tournaments that build towards your PGA Tour card. Each one helps you ‘get there’, though I suspect that it will get you there regardless of how well you might have done. Anyway, you are motivated to continue to play until you reach PGA Tour access, which will definitely feel like an achievement. The game is designed to slyly build your motivation through pre-PGA Tour micro achievements. The commentators help to push this as well, though they have their own flaws in the game. Once you snag that PGA Tour card, you’re off and running, and a lot of golf courses open up for you.
Upgrades – As you progress in the game, you gather XP/coins for your successes and accomplishments. This XP/coins are guaranteed to accumulate, even if you’re a complete (bleep)-up on the course. For example, I did so poorly on one hole in the game that I was forced to move to another hole because I had reached my shot limit (trust me, it takes some real effort to get there). There was no recovery from that hole-up. In spite of my terrible Tin Cup-like journey, the XP/coins equaled out to better clubs, outfits, and a few other accessories for my golfer. The game lets you know that in the midst of all your golfing failures, you’re still a winner in its heart. Sappiness aside, the gathering of XP helps to create motivation for you to keep playing. Getting better gear helps to improve your gameplay experience and gather more XP. Circle of life stuff, right?
These are the two biggest reasons to continue competing in a single-player experience. The game does a good job of providing other modes that will make your stay a bit more plentiful. They include:
Character Creation – This option is fantastic. Taking a page out of its WWE and NBA titles, 2K’s PGA Tour 2K21 allows you to create that someone special you never knew you needed. For me, Damon was just a thing to behold (photo not included). My man was tall, horse-faced, sported lizard eyes, and his short game was nothing…well…short of great. My golfer looked like a Dark Elf from Elder Scrolls that was more interested in shooting 18 than swinging an ax. The game goes really in-depth with how much detail you can put into your character’s creation. Like Skyrim types of details. It’s quite impressive and will certainly be a Reddit thread sometime in the future.
Online Play – This might be the only sporting game that I would consider playing other actual people online. The online portion fo this game is calm and cool. It also sports a society option that allows you to set up and execute customized seasons. If there was a time we needed this option, that time is now during the pandemic. Creating a structure and something to look forward to playing with actual people makes this mode worth its weight in gold. It’s a neat option that, while featured in other sporting games in some way, is a welcomed addition to the PGA Tour family.
Golf Course Creation – If you like this option, then have at it. It’s neat, but I’m not sure how much time I could dedicate to properly enjoy it. More power to you all and Greg Norman, who is probably going to be enjoying his first video game experience because of this mode. That man makes mean golf courses.
All of the above make the game absolutely fun and give you plenty of variety when it comes to figuring out why you would want to play PGA Tour 2K21. It gives you a solid reason to play golf and enjoy it in a video game format. I think 2K might have done what they could to not only separate their game from EA’s series but also find new and meaningful ways to play the sport in video game form.
All of the above said, there are some distractions that sometimes make the game stumble.
Hooked it
Presentation is hit and miss
The presentation for this game is divided into good and bad. The good? The environments are absolutely outstanding. The art department seemed to firmly understand that the joy of golf comes from the gorgeous courses that it features. There are so many beautiful and intricate details on a golf course that make some of them incredibly famous, such as Kentucky’s Valhalla course. There was a reason back in the 90s why video game golf courses were sold separately when PGA Tour was being made by EA. Time and effort were spent replicating the courses for PGA Tour 2K21 and the devs absolutely perfected this part of the presentation. Every ounce of artistry effort and meticulous details seems to have gone into course creation. They were really quite spectacular.
The bad? Oh, my…the character models are very last generation. Even Damon looks like he could have come straight from an Xbox 360 version of the game. He is very clunky texturally, and he just looks bad. Is he unplayable? No. I hide him in clothes to try and ignore how much detail he doesn’t have, but he does look rough. I feel like more time should have been spent with matching player detail to the environment. They are two different worlds.
Another knock against the presentation is the announcers, Luke Elvy and Rich Beem, though not a huge knock. Let me just say that their commentary does sound natural. I’m not complaining about their delivery whatsoever. I think they did a fine job and a believable job with it. My problem with the commentary is the variety of commentary, as it does become repetitive at times. For example, when Luke Elvy predicted where my ball was going to end up (many times), and if it didn’t end up there, Rich Beem would harass him about it. This would happen many, many, many, many times. It happened so many times that I began to not like Rich because he seemed like a bully (and I’m sure he isn’t, but he just told Luke how wrong he was over and over again). Long story short, the game had a lot of commentaries repeating. It did try to isolate moments/achievements and make them special, like when Damon won his first tournament or when he got his PGA Tour card, but the game seemed to run out of things to say quickly.
These are my only complaints against the game, but they are significant because they’re what you’re seeing and hearing. Do they affect the gameplay? Not at all, but they both should have been improved.
Overall
PGA Tour 2K21 is a good game that delivers a spot-on golfing experience. It brings a variety of courses, great mechanics, and plenty of reasons to keep playing. If the presentation could have been improved it would have been the perfect golfing package. As it stands, if you’re looking for a good golfing experience than you got it.
