Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5 out of 10

The Golf Club is a sports game available for download from the PlayStation Store for the PS4. As The Golf Club is the first of its kind produced for PS4; the obvious questions surrounding the release would have to be if it appropriately surpasses the quality of golf games that have gone before it on the previous generation of consoles and is it a worthy successor to Electronic Arts’ PGA Tour golf games.

The tee-off game mode is effectively a practice round consisting of 18 holes which is really where the player should begin the game to learn the controls, general gameplay mechanics and perfecting the techniques of the golf swing and applying the appropriate amount of power to land the ball wherever they believe is best on the course from approach shots along the fairway to landing on the green.

The play game mode allows players to participate in a round, tour or a tournament of choice with a round providing stroke play, match play and four ball rules, while the tour and tournament features only allow stroke play rules. Stroke play is the most common form of play for professional events as it is adds the score for each hole of the round or tournament with the player from the maximum of four participating who has produced the lowest score winning the event; while match play is a straight shoot out between two golfers for the lowest score; and four ball rules being two teams of two golfers with the team-mate achieving the lowest score earning their team a well deserved point towards a potential victory as it is the team with the most points or an unassailable lead that wins the match.

The Greg Norman course designer allows players to create their own courses and share them with the entire world with various design elements, such as the theme selection between a rural, alpine, autumn, desert or links environment; terrain density for the amount of trees, water and hills required in the surrounding environment; an easy, medium or hard course difficulty; the amount of holes the course will comprise of ranging from a single to 18 holes; and the name of the course. However, it does not end there by a long way as there are abilities granted by the course designer to actually edit individual holes beyond leaving them in their initial procedurally generated state with bunkers, surfaces, objects as well as the orientation, inclination and time of day, while also being able to fundamentally raise or flatten a course as much as the player wants to, alongside full customisation of how many par 3 and par 5 holes are included and the size, slope, hazards and speed of greens; start distance, hazards, firmness and width of fairways and the width of the rough, which are all quite easy to navigate and implement despite there being a lot of customisation options.

The competition creator allows players to create a competition with a variety of customised elements, such as a unique name and any number of courses preferred for selection in the competition that already exist or are of own unique creation as well as players own preferred settings to impact the difficulty of the competition, such as the duration ranging anywhere from a day to 30 days or forever; a grid to aid in putting on the green; a wind meter to help read the direction of the wind; shot suggestion for a suggested club prior to each shot; the scout, approach and putting cameras to aid the ball positioning; and the level of privacy between if a competition is private with an invitation required or open to all players.

The options available are all excellent design choices as it allows players a level of freedom that will provide the experience that golf fans will want from their own courses and competitions as the courses can be customised to such a level of a crazy golf or a realistic golf course. Players can rate and favourite any course to allow other players to see the collective opinion of how good or bad it is; which is always a great time saving and sociable feature to showcase the absolute best of the best golf courses that have taken a long time to be created in such careful detail and consideration.

The only problem is the lack of a structured career mode as there are individual events, but none of them lead to any career progression as  would be anticipated from most sports games, while there are no official players, player likenesses, courses or tournaments which may put some golfing enthusiasts off that are looking for a pure simulation of the most historical golf courses. However, the saving grace is the Greg Norman course designer as it certainly provides the potential for recreating any favourite courses as accurately as players want to work in harmony with the competition creator to even title it as though it was the official course or tournament for that extra level of realism.

There is an extensive range of character customisation to provide for the golfing character with the look designed for him or her to have with four male golfers and two female golfers to choose from. However, changing the golfer’s stance from right-handed to left-handed is just the beginning as there are a variety of designs including 5 hats, 5 gloves, 5 t-shirts, 5 trousers and f pairs of shoes to choose from with everything from a range of colours to stripes and even tartan to match anyone’s style preferences.

The stats comprises of a wide range of statistical analysis from various categories including my stats, creation, career and rankings with my stats delivering coverage of key gameplay stats such as how many rounds have been completed, their average difficulty, global rating and average score coupled with competition stats for how many competitions  have been  entered and how many rounds have been won with an average placing; how many aced, birdied, eagled and albatross’ed strokes have been achieved, alongside record distances for longest drive, hole out and putt as well as par ratios for how many times the player has succeeded at a pars 3, 4, 5 or other results. The creation stats delivers a breakdown of how many courses have been published, the average rating received, the amount of times they have been played publicly, their average par and difficulty, while there is also coverage of the competitions created, how many awards earned, course bests on your own created courses and par ratios. There is also career stats providing a look at all time, monthly and weekly analysis of average pars 3, 4 and 5 scores, fairways and greens in regulation, average drive distance, putts per hole and putt accuracy in long, medium and short lengths with the rankings providing online leaderboards.

Players can watch replays of any shot on any hole they have played during the current round of golf they are participating in as well as also being able to replay any of the shots from local or online multiplayer opponents or ghost opponents, whilst they can watch over a single shot as many times as they want to, which is a valuable feature for those who want to perfect the technique to replicate an extraordinary shot.

The Golf Club supports the share feature that allows players to upload a video clip or upload a screen shot to Facebook or Twitter; and broadcast live gameplay footage via Twitch or Ustream as the game is being experienced with a simple tap of the share button and selecting the option of choice. The PS4’s hard-drive continuously stores the most recent fifteen minutes of gameplay footage, so players still have the chance to decide if they would like to share something amazing a few minutes after it has taken place. The share feature is a next-gen revolution that has only improved with the further customisation provided by the Share Factory app that allows commentary, music, themes, stickers, effects, text, picture-in-picture video between game footage and the player’s reaction from the PlayStation Camera and much more besides, which will only continue to prosper and flourish as it matures with additional features and further experimentation in the future.

The Golf Club supports the remote play feature that allows players to play almost any PS4 game on their PlayStation Vita via a Wi-Fi internet connection by pairing up the PS4 and Vita via configuring the settings on your PS4 to enable the Vita to connect to it, then entering the code provided from the settings menu on the Vita’s PS4 Link application with the initial setup taking around only two minutes. The Golf Club’s performance during remote play is pretty good as the graphics, audio and general performance of the PS4 version is replicated with precision, although the controls have been slightly modified with L2 having moved to the left of the rear touch pad for shot modification.

The controls are well mapped to the DualShock 4 and are actually rather simplistic to learn as the control scheme consists of pressing triangle to enter the scout camera; pressing O to enter hole overview during the fairway or the approach camera during the putting green; holding L2 followed by moving the left analogue stick or pressing up, down, left or right on the d-pad to perform a shot modification; pressing L1 or R1 to navigate through and select the appropriate golf club for the shot; pressing square to change the style of shot; moving the left analogue stick to the left or right or pressing left or right on the d-pad to aim the shot; pulling back on the right analogue stick and moving it forward to take a shot or putt with the power of the shot being controlled by how far you pull the right analogue stick backwards before moving it forwards; pressing the share button takes you to the share feature menu; and pressing the options button to display the pause menu.

There is an alternative control scheme which swaps the swing from the right to the left analogue stick and the aiming of the shot from the left to the right analogue stick, while retaining the rest of the control scheme. There is no touch pad implementation which is surprising as it could have produced so many alternatives to the control scheme by swiping across in the direction wanted to adjust the swing, swiping across the touch pad in the direction required to modify the shot or perhaps to even pan the camera angle. The light bar remains red during single player, but produces a multitude of colours during multiplayer as you pass a controller from player to player with such colours as orange, light blue and purple to represent each player participating in the match. However, there is no vibration implementation which is astonishing as it could have produced greater immersion particularly when players have landed in a bunker or water hazard or perhaps even when attempting to navigate their way out of a bunker or thicker grass when in the rough.

The graphics have moments of flare with the individual components of the golf courses, such as the grass, bunkers and water hazards looking great as well as the moving cloud formations in the sky and the fluid animations and graphical detail of the golfer. However, there are instances of foliage and shadows popping up as the scout camera moves along the course which reduces the overall graphical quality, while there is no sign of any crowds which removes an element of realism regarding the sense that players are participating in a golf tournament or event that spectators would naturally be interested in.

The presentation of the game is solid with a great user interface across various menus such as the main menu, play menus, course designer, create competition, stats, setting and various gameplay menus with support for navigation via the left analogue stick, directional pad and face buttons, although it does not include support for navigation via the right analogue stick and touch pad. The background of the menu screens revolves around the most recent golf course played on, which adds plenty of colour and life to the menus.

The audio consists of commentary, ambience and music with the observations tending to be quite laid back and perhaps from the perspective of how a caddy would advise a golfer during and in between each hole, the information of whether the player has scored a negative score for the hole such as a bogey or a positive score for the hole such as a birdie or eagle, and the current score for the round as well as how well you have performed on the putting green; if the wind may come into play on the current hole; analysis of the ball positioning in regards to if the ball looks as though it is heading into a water hazard, how the lie angle looks from the area of the course the shot is being taken from and how many yards the ball is from the hole; amongst many more phrases.

The sound effects mostly comprise of ambience such as animals, insects, birds tweeting and the rippling of water in nearby lakes to provide an atmosphere of the surrounding environment in relation to the golf course, whilst there are further sound effects for striking the golf ball, when the golf ball bounces and lands on the course or in a water hazard and when the flag pole ripples in the wind while on the putting green, alongside relaxing music. However, the additional atmosphere of a crowd is certainly missing as there is no applause for a world class shot or putt. There is no DualShock 4 speaker implementation, which is surprising as it could have produced the informative commentary, ambient and ball related sound effects or the relaxing music as another layer of audio.

 

The trophy list includes 25 trophies with 9 bronze, 8 silver, 7 and 1 platinum trophy. The easiest trophies have to be the Amateur Golfer bronze trophy for completing an 18 hole round of golf, while there are others that are easy in the sense that players will definitely achieve them, but they will require an accumulation over a period of time, such as the Give them an Inch bronze trophy for putting a total of one mile and the I Would Walk silver trophy for playing holes totalling a length of 500 miles. There are also some online trophies, such as the I’ll Take That bronze trophy for beating a friend’s course record on any course; the Golf Buddy bronze trophy for playing against a live rival; the Party Planner silver trophy for inviting three unique live friends to one of your rounds of golf; and the Explorer gold trophy for playing 100 unique user-created courses designed by other members of the online community. The hardest trophies include the Ace gold trophy for scoring a hole-in-one on an official course; the Close But No Cigar silver trophy for placing the ball one yard from the hole on a 250+ yards out on an official course; the Super Ace gold trophy for scoring a hole-in-one from 250+ yards; and the Lucky Number Seven gold trophy for finishing a 70+ par course at par or better using only a seven iron. It is estimated that depending upon skill, a good trophy guide to provide some helpful tips and that it would take between 10 to 15 hours to platinum the trophy list.

There are four difficulty levels including: easy, medium, hard and hardest with the difficulty levels for each round of golf depending upon a variety of factors, such as how many holes are in a round from one all the way through to 18; how many water hazards and bunkers are situated on the courses; how low or high the par is set; how strong the wind is in general as well as how strong the cross-wind is in determining the trajectory of the ball; and much more besides.

There are three ways of participating in multiplayer as there is local multiplayer for up to four players that can use separate controllers or alternate between the same controller for a user friendly and cost effective solution to potentially not having a controller for each of the four players, while there is also online multiplayer for up to four players and online multiplayer against the best performances of three other players of the player’s choosing in the scenario that none of your friends are online at that given moment, although there is an option to automatically add online friends into the game when they are playing the same course as you, which is another excellent design choice and sociable feature.

Up to four players can play stroke play or four ball rules, while match play is for two players and while each form of rules are competitive; the most varied is four ball rules as two teams of two players face each other, therefore four ball rules are not only competitive, but they are also co-operative multiplayer too as you attempt to help your team-mate.

The online leaderboards focuses on global rankings, friends and personal score, while covering the all time and weekly statistics with each leaderboard containing each player’s rank; name (PSN ID); and their global rating with the positioning of each player based upon their global rating.

The replayability stems from the most standout feature of the game, which has to be the Greg Norman course designer feature as it allows players to create whatever style of golf course they want to and share it with the entire world, therefore creating endless replayability not only for yourself, but for everyone else too. Local and online multiplayer also play a huge part in the replay value as with all sports games due to the unpredictability of the result, while there is also competitive online leaderboards that will collectively keep players coming back for quite some time.

Overall, The Golf Club is an excellent golf game which makes up for the lack of official licenses with an amazing in depth course designer, competition creator and sociable sharing features, alongside entertaining local and online multiplayer. If you are a golfing enthusiast, then you should definitely give The Golf Club a try as there are features that will not be found in other current golf games that make it just as much of an entertaining and rewarding experience.

Jason Bonnar

Analysis

• Title: The Golf Club
• Developer: HB Studios
• Publisher: HB Studios
• System: PS4
• Format: PSN Download
• Cross-Buy: No
• Cross-Play: No
• Players: 1-4 (Local and Online Multiplayer/Social Sharing/Online Leaderboards)
• Hard Drive Space Required: 2.2GB (Version 1.03)