Rory McIlroy PGA TOUR Review (PS4)

 

See our earlier impressions:

 

Gameplay

There are a lot of things Rory does right when it comes to simply playing golf. First off, there are various adjustments you can make to difficulty that will allow you to play either a more arcade-based version of golf or a more sim version.

The spectrum available in Rory McIlroy PGA Tour, and the ability to play on polar opposite sides of the spectrum, should be commended because you get good results from both sides of the spectrum.

 

 

With a more sim slant, Rory can be particularly unforgiving -- where you have to use real world thought processes to beat the course around you. Wolf Creek is one particular course where you have to really think through your shots. With the dramatic changes in elevation and the huge doglegs over mountains, you oftentimes have to do mental acrobatics in planning your next shot.

Even still, how good you are does depend on how good you are on the sticks. Many are reporting greater variability on shots with the three-click system, and I did find that as well, but I much prefer the analog stick swinging mechanic. In that mechanic, if you are somewhat steady on the sticks, you won’t be missing many fairways and greens on approach shots.

Putting is fair and what you would expect from a golf game at this point. I personally had no trouble dissecting the green, making a read and then sinking the putt. I’m neither sinking 30 footers with regularity nor am I guaranteed to hit everything under 10 feet. I suspect many are better on the greens than I, but for most the putting should offer a realistic challenge.

One potential weakness is the short game, which I found to be oftentimes rather easy. In many cases, hitting a chip off of the fringe to the cup was easier than making a putt from the same distance. This definitely should not be the case. However, in Rory’s defense, I’ve felt this was the case with many golf games over the years.

Overall, the gameplay in Rory will be what you make of it. It has no real frills, but what it does do it does well. If you want a game that will play a good round of golf with some basic presentation around it, you can definitely find that in Rory McIlroy PGA Tour.

 

 

But Off Of The Course…

The wheels for Rory do come off a bit when you leave the course. Anyone who remembers the outrage and problems many had with NHL 15, well, you’ll find a lot of similarities here. The game’s feature list has been gutted, and its offerings are currently just razor thin.

First off, the amount of actual licensed golfers and courses simply pales in comparison to previous games. With just 12 golfers and eight licensed courses (nine if you got the pre-order bonus), you won’t find much variability there. While there is hope more courses/golfers will be added to Rory in the coming months, that does not change the fact that the game itself shipped with a bare minimum of licensed properties.

The game does sport two realistic fictional courses, which I wish there were more of at the very least to give the Tour Pro Mode some more variety.

Rory’s main mode is Tour Pro Mode, which simply does not compare to other major sports gaming career offerings. The game itself does the absolute bare minimum to allow you to play a series of tournaments on an official-feeling PGA Tour.

There is no calendar to see what events are coming up, or even a way to look back at previous events. There is nothing to make the game feel alive, and there’s nothing at all to indicate what time of year it is or how far through a season you’ve made it.

For a game that does so well with feedback on the course, the lack of it off of the links is just breathtakingly bad. It’s possible Tour Pro is the worst career mode of this generation, perhaps the worst one in years in the sports gaming genre (at least among simulation titles).

 

 

Customization Options

Rory does not offer a robust set of customization options for players either, which will be a problem for many.

The player creation suite is incredibly basic, with only a few presets on making your character look certain ways. The auto-generated faces that you splash hair and skin tones on top of feels very early PS3 era. While there are easily hundreds of possible combinations, if you want an avatar that looks remotely similar to you, you will have a hard time making that happen.

 

 

A Game Struggling To Feel Alive

When it comes to the game’s tone and feel, there’s not much that comes to life in Rory. The commentary is basic, and you’ll quickly find lines that repeat (is that really a commercial shot?). Furthermore, the galleries are oftentimes not as dynamic as the real thing. (We recognize many sports games struggle with both these aspects, but regardless they're still weaknesses.)

Sometimes the gallery will go crazy for a tee shot down the middle of the fairway, and then other times people will quietly clap for a major-winning birdie. In short, obviously that's not a good thing.

Outside of that, there’s nothing to draw you in during events. Anybody who watches Tour events knows that golfers are finishing holes all the time and big shots are being made everywhere. The presentation in Rory is severely limited in the sense that you don’t see those other shots happen ever, nor do you even hear about them. The score is simply different on a cutaway between holes.

And when it comes to playing in a tournament, you don’t play in a group; you still play solo. That’s something that is a step backwards for the series, and it leaves a lot on the table. You don’t even get the dynamic ball tracking you could find in The Golf Club to allow you to see how others are doing versus what you are doing.

All of this leads to a game that just struggles to feel alive and dynamic. Instead, Rory is simply left feeling cold and empty, with no real dynamic elements to it at all.

 

 

Conclusion

Rory McIlroy PGA Tour is a game that is solid on the course if you simply like playing golf. However, there is nothing else here to keep you playing beyond a few rounds.

The modes themselves are pretty frivolous, with even the Night Club Challenge being pretty basic -- and a waste of time if you are a sim golf fan. To be clear though, Night Club being an arcade mode is not the real issue, it's just that the mode feels like a mobile game wrapped in a console game, which is not necessarily a compliment.

Given the lack of frills outside of the core gameplay, there’s nothing saying this game brings a good value to you at $60. With time, that could change as content is added and the price is dropped, but as it stands Rory is simply too basic to be considered anything but average. Even worse, it's not a yearly title so an official PGA Tour product that matches up to the promise of this generation could now be years away if post-release content does not come through in a big way.

Score: 5.0 (Average)

(Ed. Note: Online play did factor into our final review as well, but we will have a more in-depth look at online play in an upcoming feature. As of now, it's one element we have not touched on much during process of posting thoughts on this game, but rest assured we will get to it.)