EA Sports PGA TOUR Impressions (PC)

[TheBleedingRed21]

While not for everyone, I think this is a great game for me. Graphics are incredible, courses look so good!

Gameplay is fun, I’m on simulation and struggling here and there.

Only thing I do not like is the online requirements for everything except play now. Not sure how this will affect mods yet.

A side note: backswing delay when first starting your swing is different per golfer which seems odd. Jordan Speith is almost instant while Dustin Johnson has a noticeable pause.

[icicle22]

Quote: Originally Posted by iztrumental

Agreed. For me I prefer to disable motion blur, depth of field and even ambient occlusion. Each of these settings help with performance. I also found the difference between high and ultra to be mostly insignificant if you want to push more frames which in this game actually helps with frame latency.

I don't recall seeing a motion blur setting myself. I'll have to double check.

[iztrumental]

Quote: Originally Posted by icicle22

I don't recall seeing a motion blur setting myself. I'll have to double check.

Yep it's there along with bloom which I also prefer to disable in most if not all PC games I play. Basically with my 4090 I run everything Ultra except I disable the following.

Dynamic Resolution
Bloom
Motion Blur
Depth of Field

In addition, I usually turn off Vsync in-game but I keep it on in my global settings in the Nvidia Control Panel. In the control panel I also lock my framerate usually 1 frame below my monitor native so when on my UW I set it to 143FPS and on my LG G1 I set it to 119FPS. Low latency mode is set to Ultra. Power Management Mode to "Prefer maximum performance." Everything else is default.

[dr1980]

Played a few more rounds and really getting the hang of it, enjoy myself quite a bit.

I do wish there was an option to change the number of rounds in a tournament. It seems like the only two options are full four round tournament or playing a selection of holes from a four round tournament. I'd love to see the ability to choose 1-4 rounds like in 2k golf.

[MrArlingtonBeach]

Quote: Originally Posted by dr1980

Played a few more rounds and really getting the hang of it, enjoy myself quite a bit. I do wish there was an option to change the number of rounds in a tournament. It seems like the only two options are full four round tournament or playing a selection of holes from a four round tournament. I'd love to see the ability to choose 1-4 rounds like in 2k golf.

Interestingly enough, they showed that you could in their career mode trailer:


But this is what it looks like in-game now:

[ChiTownKid]

I have Play Pro, and have put probably about 7 or 8 hours into the game so far.

My PC specs:
i9 10900K stock
RTX 3080 10GB
32GB RAM

I don't have a lot of time, so I'll keep it simple and give 5 good and 5 bad impressions....

Positives:

1. Game is frickin gorgeous. Without a doubt the prettiest golf game ever made. Aside from a few inconsistently dropped frames on fly-bys and ball follows, it's smooth as glass. Playing some of the coastal holes is sweet therapy. I did notice a couple of small texture issues, but nothing major and almost not worth mentioning.

2. Sounds are great. The ocean, the birds, the ambient sounds... all wonderful. Like the graphics, therapeutic. I also love how the crowd hushes when you're ready to shoot. Nice touch.

3. Overall, the presentation is really good. I mean *really* good. It looks and sounds like a modern PGA game should, which lends a strong sense of authenticity. Very attractive.

4. Gameplay is, overall, very good. Now that I've spent some time with it, and improved my golfer's accuracy skills a bit, I find it has a nice balance. Challenging, but fair. I play on the hardest difficulty, with all aids turned off except the power meter. All is not perfect, however. Far from it.

5. A proper career mode with real major tournments, with adjustable AI difficulty before you start a tournament. I truly appreciate this.

Bonus: When I was 18, the original PGA Tour for Sega Genesis was released. I *loved* that game, and readily recall how much I thought about it when I wasn't playing it. It was something I always wanted to get back to whenever possible, and it actually got me interested in real golf. Same with TW14, which I consider to be the best golf game ever made. At the height of it, it's all I wanted to play. And when this new game is firing on all cylinders, it gives me the same feeling those older games did. It makes me want to play as much, and as often, as I can.

Unfortunately, it doesn't always fire on all cylinders and, in some ways, feels like it's half-baked, and simply not ready for release. In others, it feels completely at odds with the authenticity established by the presentation.

Negatives:

1. No mouse swing. On a PC golf game? This is just patently ridiculous, especially considering the pedigree of TW games on the PC. I know 3C is coming, but something tells me mouse swing isn't. And I am equal parts angry and stupefied.

2. Shot feedback does not always equal what happens on a shot. Far too often, probably around 1 in 5 shots, a shot will go errant, to varying degrees, while the feedback shows everything was good. Or, conversely, feedback will show trouble, but the shot sails along fine. Maybe there's something about the game I don't understand, but I'm not making the connection in these circumstances. If it's a mild error, it's frustrating. When it costs me a stroke or two, it's infuriating.

3. I honestly don't understand how the factors affecting a shot's timing work, or the effects they actually have. If I overswing, what does that do? If my shot is slow or fast, what does that do? What causes the ball (in the feedback on the bottom right) to wobble while it's in flight? I think I've found a correlation between the wobble and a resulting hook/slice, but I still don't know what causes it, or how to avoid it.

4. The triple-bogey pickup. Seriously, man. What. The. F***. Is. This. Bulls***!? I could see this as a welcomed option in multiplayer with randoms, as a way to thwart griefers who just want to knock the ball around and waste everyone's time, but a forced feature? In single player mode? In *career*!? In *tournaments*!? That has no business whatsoever in single-player play but, if it has to exist, it needs to be an option. If that isn't either patched out or patched into an option, I will stop playing this game. I mean it. If lack of mouse swing isn't a gamekiller for me (it's real close), this triple-bogey bs definitely is.

5. As far as I can tell, there's no alternate turns in multiplayer, not even in private matches. Every one shoots simultaneously. When my friends and I play, we like to watch each other shoot. But at the moment, we can't. This needs to be made an option, or we won't be playing it.

Bonus: I have to unlock the ability to putt from the fringe? WTF?

There's a great game in here, if EA is willing to put the time in to chisel off the nonsense, and polish the potential. But as it stands, I can't give it higher than a 5/10. It sucks, in spite of its strong positives.

Ya know, I don't get EA. These jackasses literally made the best golf game of all time 10 years ago. All they have to do is update it. Modernize it. But, for whatever reason, they are incapable of producing real quality, it seems, even when they already have.

Anyway, that's all for now. I'll be watching to see what EA patches and acknowledges in the days and weeks to come. I still have Play Pro for like another 5 months. That's exactly how long I'll give it. EA has been a major disappointment to me this past year, and PGA was my final consideration. If it still sucks in September, I won't be renewing Play Pro.

[King Richard]

For those that have played career mode already,
Is the rest of the field made up of real pga pros ? Besides the licensed pros that have there likenesses in game, are the other names in the field real pros or fake names ?
Also wondering if the women are excluded from pga tour events? I see them in videos on YouTube but that is multiplayer fun rounds I think? Just wondering if they force us to play career mode with male and female golfers playing together?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[ChiTownKid]

Quote: Originally Posted by King Richard

For those that have played career mode already, Is the rest of the field made up of real pga pros ? Besides the licensed pros that have there likenesses in game, are the other names in the field real pros or fake names ? Also wondering if the women are excluded from pga tour events? I see them in videos on YouTube but that is multiplayer fun rounds I think? Just wondering if they force us to play career mode with male and female golfers playing together? Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I've only played the USGA amateur tournament in my career, so I don't know about pros, but there were female names among the rest of the field. I assume they were not real people.