The Golf Club Available Now For Xbox One & PC, Soon For PlayStation 4

[greenegt]

Quote: Originally Posted by DaveDQ

This was my first Smartglass purchase.

Same for me. Bought it this morning from my iPad. Now, I just need Sunday to get here.

[TexasFan2005]

I'm very excited to play this after work today. I haven't played a golf game since TW 06 (i think) when the 360 had just come out. That day my college roomate and I were sooo pumped to play, put the disc into the 360, and moments later my brand new 360 met its maker (RROD). I had a warranty with gamespot so I traded it in, got my new 360, but left TW in the old one's tray. I didn't realize this for more than a week, and it was too late to retrieve it.

Needless to say, I'm happy to finally play another golf game on console!

[DaveDQ]

I like the feel of this game. It brings you back to when you didn't have to chop through all the bloated stuff to get to the game.

[Hutton]

Downloaded & played a round at Little Manor GC this morning. Finished an EVEN par, with a birdie putt on 18 that stuck on the lip of the cup.

Here are my quick impressions after 18 holes:

Good:
-The no frills feel of the game is fantastic. Stepping up to the tee & stroking a 285 yard driver between 2 bunkers feels real natural.
-No loading time between holes is great, I played 18 in under 35 minutes.
-I love the fact that you basically have to modify the aim on every shot.
-Wind is a real hassle, I was playing at 9-10 MPH all round and it really effects the ball flight, very nice design
-The depth of courses will be great, I just jumped into one that a friend was playing and it was a blast.
-The ghost balls & notifications of friends playing rounds is tremendous.
-The strategy off the tee is fun when you have to consider the risk vs reward of clubbing up. You really need to consider positioning for your second shot, just like IRL. I bet this becomes even more important on difficult courses, and when you have some familiarity with the course you can start to play more strategically.

Bad:
-Putting is a fickle beast. The greens on Little Manor were very flat, so that helped a lot, but in the quick practice I was playing on a designed links course putting was nearly impossible. I was 3 & 4 putting everything on this hilly greens. I am scared to play a course with undulating greens.
-The "bad" part above mostly comes from the lack of info when putting. I don't necessarily want to see the exact predicted ball path like in TW, but I'd appreciate some more info/tips to help read the greens & distance.
-Graphically this isn't great looking, jaggies and trees popping in (I activated the vsync option, not sure how that effects anything).
-I didn't see any place to design my golfer, it threw me in some beige khakis & a dark polo, which was fine attire, but I was hoping the user could select their golfer (maybe you can and I just missed it?)
-It took about a minute to load the course, not bad but I was kind of just waiting there for something to happen and then it finally loaded.
-All the crickets chirping gets a tad annoying after awhile.
-Stroking the driver at 100% power right down the chute is a bit too easy IMO. I did hit one drive into the water, but for the most part I was able to club up to the driver & place balls down the fairway and in between bunkers when necessary. I'd like it to be a little less accurate off the Tee (I'm by no means a great stick jockey either). I also didn't try any fades or draws, so maybe on more difficult courses you need to have a more accurate swing to apply the desired fade/draw etc.



Overall this is perhaps the best $35 I've spent. I'm so happy to finally have another next gen game to play besides FIFA. This is a really great effort with tons of replay factor. I can't wait to find some really cool user designed courses to play, the options will literally be endless.

[DaveDQ]

There is a white noise that needs to be toned down some with audio.

[Hutton]

Quote: Originally Posted by DaveDQ

There is a white noise that needs to be toned down some with audio.

Yes there is, and also the menu music is way too loud, it blew me away when I first loaded up the game.

[OnlookerDelay]

I posted my impressions of the XB1 version at the official forum this morning. I'm a bit underwhelmed by the way it turned out, as you can see by my comments below:

"I've played the PC version since the closed beta, so the mechanics of the game are not new to me today.

The first item on my checklist was to see how the 720p resolution was going to compare to the 900p and 1080p resolutions I've been using on the PC version. I was really concerned about how it was going to look on my 55" Toshiba LCD HDTV. I wasn't really sure what to expect, but I wasn't expecting something that looks as blurry and lacking in detail as what I'm seeing. I was hoping for some help with the XB1's ability to use antialiasing, but I'm seeing no evidence of it in my brief run. The green grid lines are alarmingly stepped looking. The shaft of the golf club shows a good bit of jagginess as well. OTOH, the golfer looks pretty well resolved, although there's some obvious "stair-stepping" on the arms. The trees in the distance look a bit lit quivering, amorphous blobs in high wind (I was seeing 8 to 10 mph winds at Autumn Ridge G.C.).

The nearby textures looked pretty authentic and the water almost seems to gain a level of realism in the loss of resolution, as they don't look as falsely reflective as they do in the PC version at higher resolutions, AA and AF settings, so a plus there. Overall though, what I've seen so far with this loss of resolution has just strengthened my decision to buy a PS4. I now know for a fact that "resolution-gate" just isn't a figment of my imagination. Since it doesn't appear that the XB1 version of The Golf Club is using any AA (or enough to make a real difference), the 720p resolution's shortcomings give this game a bit of a 'last-gen' appearance on my screen

If a game is not going to be using high levels of antialiasing, it would behoove it to be displayed in a higher resolution. In my experience, a non antialiased game at 1080p still looks sharper than a 720p game at 4x msaa. However, I just did an A/B comparison on the same TV between the XB1 version of TGC and the PC version set to 720p/high graphics detail (which is what the XB1 version is equvalent to), 4x msaa, and 8x AF. Both games were displaying the golfer on the first tee at my favorite course - Autumn Ridge G.C. The PC version looked significantly better with its cleaner lines, thanks to the 4x msaa.

The next item on my checklist was the feel of the swing interface. The XB1 version does feel slightly more fluid and consistent than the PC version, or at least, the way the PC version runs on my system at comparable resolutions and graphics settings. I can adjust my resolution and graphics setting down enough on the PC to make the swing look more fluid (thanks to 50 to 60 fps) and feel as fluid. When I do that, the net effect is the PC version is made to feel more responsive because the animation is doing a better job of reflecting you movement with the input stick. Still, if the PC version is running at 30 fps; it will not feel as lively as the XB1 version, with Vsync enabled. I can tell that the game is responding more proportionally with my stick movements thanks to the 60 fps control thread.

The overall gameplay feels pretty good though. HOGZTheTruth joined my in simultaneous play for my first round at Autumn Ridge G.C. and it went pretty good. I didn't have my headset on at this hour to startle family members, but it still felt pretty "live". I can't say that I wouldn't enjoy this game on the XB1 because of its muted video resolution, but I'm reasonably confident I will be more satisfied with the PS4 version in a week or so, if it delivers at least the same gameplay experience at 1080p. I now wholeheartedly believe that The Golf Club deserves a 1080p canvas!"

I probably wouldn't be as disappointed as I am, had I not played the PC version all these months. Now that I've finally got a decent graphics card in my rig, I can play the game at higher resolutions with 4x msaa and 8x AF, at a playable frame rate on most courses. The XB1 version doesn't look like a next-gen console game, IMO. It's still fun to play and if you pick the right courses, it won't bog the console down to where your gameplay is suffering due to slowdown.

Really anxious to see now how the PS4 version looks in 1080p, and whether it suffers from the same type of slowdown as the XB1 version, on the courses where I've experienced it so far (Red Diamond G&C CDC and Dunwoody Leighct). Autumn Ridge G.C. played without a hitch and is a beautiful course, so the performance with this game engine will vary significantly with the course being played.

[bluengold34_OS]

Quote: Originally Posted by Hutton

Yes there is, and also the menu music is way too loud, it blew me away when I first loaded up the game.

You can adjust the audio options in the settings -