Tuesday, August 28, 2018

The Golf Club 2019 (PC, also available for PS4 and Xbox One)

Wow. Different, but wow.

The new installment of The Golf Club released today (one of the most poorly handled and inept launches I've ever seen, actually), and I managed to play for about an hour earlier today.

Positives: the new menu system looks absolutely fantastic, Speedtree is put to very good use, it's fantastic to be able to play in career mode with PGA licensing and courses, and the animation seems to be solidly improved. Oh, and on the green, the ball actually feels like it's rolling, with a more silky rhythm than before. Very nice.

Negatives? None to speak of, yet.

However, the swing mechanic feels substantially different, and it's a significant adjustment. There's no 1-1 correspondence between your mouse movement and the golfer's swing. Instead, there's momentum modeling at work, where the golfer's backswing will continue after you've stopped moving the mouse (until you start the forward swing).

As I read that description, I'd hate it as described, but in actuality, I don't. It feels like a more complex and rhythm-based way to model the golf swing, and since (to me) the most important part of a golf swing is rhythm and tempo, I find the change to be pretty intriguing.

Having said that, my handicap was -6 with The Golf Club 2, and it's probably +10 with this new swing, so while interesting, it's not necessarily intuitive. I do think that it will feel more like real golf once I spend some time on he virtual driving range, though.

It's $49.99, which is a $10 increase from The Golf Club 2, but it seems like a fair price, given the addition of PGA licensing. Here's a link: The Golf Club 2019.

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