I am having a blast playing PGA Tour 2K21. With the difficulty sliders set to default, I spend a good amount of time weighing which club to use, think about how the wind will carry my shot, and most importantly, make sure my motion on the analog stick is true. One little misstep in any of these areas can throw off a hole, and maybe even put you out of striking distance for a tournament. Developer HB Studios has made a true golf simulation that pushes you to be a pro.
If this golf experience sounds too taxing, and you’d rather play something like Hot Shots or Mario Golf, HB Studios allows you to adjust the difficulty sliders in ways to make the golfing far easier and much faster. You can make every shot as straight as an arrow and have the course fight against you less. Even the opposing A.I. can be turned down for tournaments. When you tune the play this way, 18 holes can be completed in a matter of minutes.
HB Studios lets you play the way you want for the career, which runs through a full PGA season, complete with mid-match cutaways that show highlights by other golfers. Despite a delay in loading to show these moments, the presentation for the PGA action is pretty slick and does a nice job of framing the big moments for any tournament.
PGA Tour 2K21 also offers robust online play, ranging from matchmaking in various modes to online societies that you can be a part of. You can also design and publish your own courses. This online content either wasn’t available for me to check out during the review, or is something I feel I need to see once the game is made public to truly grasp. For this reason, I am holding off on my review, and will likely release it on either Monday or Tuesday, pending I had enough time to explore the online content.
I can say that the single-player experience is excellent so far, despite the character creator being a little bare bones and most of the clothing and clubs being locked from the outset (requiring extensive play or real money to purchase). HB Studios has been on a roll with its golf games, and PGA Tour 2K21 appears to be another great golfing experience from the developer.