Rory McIlroy PGA Tour

EA Sports returns to golf this week with its first offering on current generation consoles (XBox One and PlayStation 4), and the results are predictable based on EA's track record with previous sports. Rory McIlroy PGA Tour plays acceptably well but offers a paucity of features and options that would appeal to people invested enough in the sport in question and provide a reason to come back to the title after a disappointing first impression.

Rory McIlroy PGA Tour is the forst EA Sports golf title on current generation hardware and also the first EA golf title since 1998's Tiger Woods 99 PGA Tour Golf to not feature the now disgraced (and floundering on the course) Tiger Woods. The power of the new hardware is being touted as enabling load-free rounds, but even this advancement seems to come with a cost. While you can and do move seamlessly from hole to hole, there's no fly-over the next hole that was previously used to mask loading times but also presented the player with some context to be used in upcoming shots. The game does a great job of showing how your current aim and shot type will translate into a landing spot for that shot, but the limited camera makes it almost impossible to understand if you're setting yourself up properly for the next shot. More ability to plan your next shot would have been a welcome use of the new console's power as opposed to having foxes appear on the title screen that look like poor animatronic interpretations of life-like wildlife.

The game offers three mechanics to chose from: the analogue stick "pull back, push forward" mechanic used since the Xbox days, a "three-click" swing meter style, or a more advanced version of the analogue stick style where speed of your motions is factored into the shot as well as direction. All three play as you would expect, offering risk and reward to power up shots and, for the first two styles, the ability to apply spin to the ball in mid-air to compensate for mistakes or fine tune your aim and landing area. Where the game falls apart is in its putting mechanics. The same swing type is used for putting as is used for regular shots, but reading the break and speed of greens is more frustrating than it has ever been in an EA golf game. The system of grid lines showing break to the left or right or the uphill or downhill nature of the putt remains from prior games, but applying this information to putts longer than 6 feet or so is a guessing game, at best. There's an optional putt line that can be turned on, but it appears to only show a static, optimum path to the hole. Apart from a few early forced tutorials that tell the player "aim here on this shot," putting remains more of an exercise in trial and error than feeling like you're really learning how to effectively interpret information the game's systems are providing.

While the core golf remains playable and in line with what's expected from the franchise, Rory McIlroy PGA Tours follows in the footsteps of NHL 15 in offering limited options for playing the game. There are pick up and play options in either stroke or match play for 1-4 players and a career mode that sees you create a golfer and work through a limited PGA Tour schedule. EA has cut back from recent years' offerings and only includes 12 licensed PGA golfers (none from the LPGA, deviating from previous years), and 9 real world courses at launch. These numbers are padded out slightly by three "fantasy" courses, including the Battlefield 4 inspired "Parcel Storm" course and 4 forgettable golfers who can be dismissively summarized as nightclub guy, Battlefield soldier, and old man/woman who you're supposed to laugh at when they celebrate. The developers have teased more potential course additions via DLC, and this would be in keeping with the franchise's M.O., but with such a thin offering out of the gate and the missed opportunity to reacquire and trumpet the Augusta National course license before, during, or shortly after The Masters, it's hard to imagine any DLC announcement being greeted with more than shoulder shrugs. Adding a few dozen more courses might help extend the length of career mode and offer multiple replay options, but it's hard to not feel like this is a franchise missing a reason to revisit. Also missing from prior years is the Country Club mode, that facilitated some amount of friendly and competitive on-line play among friends or for members of previously existing communities, like Giant Bomb.

There's also an entirely forgettable "Nightclub Challenge Mode," which sees you using created or fantasy golfers to complete challenges and unlock boosts that can't be used outside of this mode? I could see this existing as a modified training mode, as one of the first challenges teaches you how to plan for your ball to roll on the fairway after landing, but some of the challenges counteract that by having you use these boosts to accomplish things that are otherwise impossible in more competitive modes, like boosting your ball in mid air and forcing it to stick immediately upon landing. The entire mode feels like a tacked on addition, and the "whimsical" styling of the courses to be nightclub-like with neon and slightly more up-temp music than your hear otherwise doesn't fundamentally mask the feeling of "Here's some more stuff to do, it doesn't matter" that pervades the mode.

Finally, the presentation has taken a major hit with the introduction of a new commentary team. Gone are Jim Nantz and, more importantly, David Feherty, who are recognizable to many casual golf fans for their work with high profile tournaments and stature in the golf world. Replacing them are Frank Nobilo and Rich Lerner, who appear to have all the personality of cardboard. Sports game commentary is notoriously poor, but this new announcing team is hampered even further by having a bare minimum of course and hole specific lines to deliver as introductions, and then immediately falling into repeated lines. If you attempt a career, be prepared to hear about your golfer having "the touch of a plumber" multiple times per tournament. More unforgivable is how tee shots on par 5 holes are frequently referred to as "solid second shots," for some bizarre reason.

Unsurprisingly based on the franchise's history, there's a core of a solid golf game present in Rory McIlroy PGA Tour. The combination of missing features, limited options in courses and golfers, and issues with presentation and putting make it difficult to recommend this game to all but the most golf-obsessed.