In 1997 or 1998, I had a lot of fun playing Actua Golf 2 on my PC. I didn’t have a lot of PC games at the time – my platform of choice in the second half of the ’90s was a Nintendo 64 – but Actua Golf 2 was a game that ran well on a fairly limited computer that was supposed to be used primarily for school work! It’s strange that I would’ve been interested in a game like that, but having played a demo version and with the game not being particularly expensive, I didn’t mind splashing out.
I found Actua Golf 2 to be a fun and surprisingly challenging title. It was more strategic than most sports games and less about hitting fast button combos, and I found that lining up my shots, choosing which club to use, and so on was a blast – certainly way more entertaining than I would’ve expected. There was a thrill to hitting the ball just right after making all of the right choices, and landing it within touching distance of the hole.
When the Nintendo Wii came along in 2006, I was on a long waiting list for a console. Even in those days, manufacturers couldn’t keep up with demand! The Wii launched with Wii Sports bundled alongside, and one of the events included was golf. Tennis and bowling were fun too, don’t get me wrong – and maybe one day we’ll have to take a longer look at Wii Sports! But for now, suffice to say that I had a blast playing golf with my little Wiimote, and of the games included in the package, it was by far the most fun to play on my own. Tennis, bowling, and boxing were definitely games that benefited from having a second player!
Wii Sports was obviously a very different kind of experience from Actua Golf 2, with a much more arcadey, casual feel. Using the Wii’s motion controls felt gimmicky at first, I must admit, but even though due to my declining health I could only play while seated, I still had fun with it. Nintendo really nailed the whole “casual game” concept with the Wii, and the nature of golf makes it a great sport to use for a gentler, less intense experience. It still took full advantage of the Wii’s motion control system, but in a completely different way from the tennis or boxing games.
I’ve never been a particularly sporty person in real life. Even as a kid, when I wasn’t bedevilled by health issues and disability, playing sports wasn’t something that held a great deal of appeal. I played rugby at school – but only when forced to in PE lessons – and as a kid, football was regularly played at one of the clubs I attended. But the rest of the time, I’d have my nose in a book or I’d be doing other things. One kid I knew at school had a dad who played golf regularly, but I never went to the course with them. The closest I’ve ever gotten to playing a real round was when I went to the mini-golf course!
All of this is to say that I have a weird history with golf and golf games! It’s not a sport I care about in the slightest, and if you asked me to explain what the difference is between a wedge and an iron, or who the current champions are on the world tour, I wouldn’t have the faintest idea. But as a casual gamer, and as someone who enjoys slower-paced, “cosy” gaming experiences, I find golf games fit the bill. And that’s how I came to spend much of the first half of 2024 playing EA Sports PGA Tour on my PC.
I’ve been a subscriber to Microsoft’s PC Game Pass service for a couple of years now, and having that subscription has felt like a pretty good deal most of the time. I got to play games I never would’ve purchased for myself – especially at full-price – thanks to Game Pass, and I’ve even tried out titles that wouldn’t have even been on my radar. Not all of them have been “my thing,” and there have been some disappointments with Game Pass along the way, too. But by and large, I’m someone who’ll speak positively about Game Pass. In my opinion, it’s a great way for players on a budget to get into current-gen gaming.
But I think we’re slightly off-topic!
Microsoft has a deal with Electronic Arts that has brought more than eighty EA games to Game Pass. I don’t think Game Pass gets the most up-to-date versions of all of EA’s sports games – the likes of EA Sports FC and the Madden American football titles don’t seem to join the service on release day. Don’t quote me on that, but I think that’s how it works. Anyway, one of the EA sports games that has recently joined the Game Pass lineup has been the aforementioned EA Sports PGA Tour. And although it had been a while since I last played much simulated golf, I thought I’d give it a whirl.
I don’t play a lot of sports games or even really games published by Electronic Arts. And it’s definitely worth taking a detour to talk about just how over-monetised EA’s sports franchises have become. FIFA – or EA Sports FC as it’s now known – has become notorious for its random in-game gambling, and for selling expensive items and in-game “points,” but I confess that I was surprised to see how corrupt PGA Tour is in that regard, too. I’m not an online gamer, but even in PGA Tour’s offline mode, spending in-game currency is required to get all but the most basic golf clubs and outfits for the player character, and there are plenty of “XP boosters” and other single-use items to briefly improve your stats.
An article or essay on the shocking state of microtransactions is long overdue here on the website. But for now, suffice to say that I find these things offensive. A simple piece of clothing like a hat or a pair of shoes, or basic cosmetic equipment like different ball colours or club designs – none of which have any impact on gameplay – are not things that should be locked behind a paywall. In-game currency is “earned” at an impossibly slow rate when playing in single-player mode, and PGA Tour also employs a storefront that only carries a handful of items at a time – presumably to heighten the need for players to pay extra for in-game currency for fear of missing out. These psychological tricks are manipulative and obscene, yet they’ve become so common in modern titles that I doubt any player would even bat an eye at the state of a game like PGA Tour any more.
I enjoy a game with good customisation options, and a title like PGA Tour – where you see your character all the time from a third-person perspective – should be one where changing outfits and trying on different shirts, hats, and golf club designs simply adds to the fun. EA has chosen to monetise this as much as possible, providing a meagre selection of basic cosmetics at the start of the game and effectively locking the rest behind an expensive paywall. I get it: this isn’t The Sims or a role-playing game where outfits and costumes are a huge part of gameplay. But the fact that these basic items are unavailable except to players who are either willing to grind through a bunch of deliberately awkward challenges or pay up… it makes me angry, to be honest. And as we’re going to talk about, that’s not what I come to a golf game for!
When the Star Wars Battlefront II debacle exploded a few years ago, I really thought that the industry might be about to turn the page on microtransactions and randomised lootboxes. The backlash to that game was so intense that even governments started getting involved, and it seemed for a brief moment as if genuine change was a possibility. Slowly, though, the greedy corporations at the top of the industry have kept pushing, and microtransactions in games today are at least as bad – and in some cases, are much worse – than they ever were in Battlefront II. For me, PGA Tour is a disappointing example of this – but I’m sure you can think of a great many others.
However, when I step away from the microtransaction marketplace… I gotta admit that I’m having a lot of fun playing EA Sports PGA Tour. There are some things about the game that I don’t like, sure, but by and large it’s recapturing that feeling that I used to get from Actua Golf 2 almost thirty years ago. It’s gentle, more often than not relaxing, but still a game that poses a challenge and that requires some thinking. Button-mashing won’t get you very far – and that’s something I appreciate!
I’ve mentioned this before here on the website, but I suffer from arthritis that affects my hands and fingers. My dominant hand has been made worse this past year after I suffered several broken bones in a fall, and I find that my ability to make frame-perfect button presses or complicated multi-button combos is greatly diminished. I was never the world’s best gamer by any stretch, but my abilities continue to decline thanks to health-related issues. Faster-paced titles like fighting games or first-person shooters are increasingly difficult!
One thing I’ve enjoyed about playing PGA Tour is how few buttons I need to press and how I don’t have to continuously grip the control pad. The default control scheme when using a control pad involves pulling back and flicking one of the analogue sticks to swing the club and strike the ball, and I actually really like this method. It feels interactive; like a half-step (or a quarter-step, I guess) between the simple button presses or mouse clicks of older golf games and the full motion controls of the Wii. And most importantly from a selfish point of view: it’s something I can do without pain!
That’s not to say I’m especially good at it; my timing can still absolutely suck! But controlling a golf game this way feels surprisingly intuitive. I know I’m probably a decade late (or more) with this compliment, but I really enjoy what this control scheme has done for what was already a fun experience. After lining up my shot, I like that I can set the controller down and really focus on getting my “swing” just right!
There are a good number of golf courses in PGA Tour, and these range in terms of difficulty. I think there’s perhaps an overabundance of courses in the United States, and this comes at the expense of other parts of the world. There are no courses at all from Asia, Africa, or South/Central America, for instance, and only one each from France, Italy, New Zealand, Canada, and the Dominican Republic. If PGA Tour is still being supported and updated, adding a handful of new courses from different parts of the world would be a nice touch.
There is diversity of environments in the courses on offer, though, with courses built in desert locales, mountains, and on coastlines all being present. And all of them are rendered beautifully.
PGA Tour is nothing special when it comes to the way human characters look, and facial expressions in particular can be pretty lacklustre. Nothing about the way people look feels current-gen, and some of the crowds can actually feel quite outdated in terms of both appearance and their simplified, copy-and-pasted animations. Player characters look a bit better, but still unspectacular. Compared with what we know is possible on current-gen hardware, there’s a lot of work to do for the next iteration of this series!
But the courses themselves are something else. They look outstanding, with grass, trees, plants, and even water being beautifully recreated. Running on my PC, with an RTX 3070 Ti graphics card, these courses have all looked absolutely fantastic, and sometimes it’s been fun to just watch the flyover of each hole and take in the setting. I’m never gonna get invited to any of these fancy places, so seeing them digitally recreated is the closest I can hope to get! Thankfully, PGA Tour does a good job.
I think the beautiful and realistic courses are another reason why playing PGA Tour has been so relaxing for me over these recent months. Getting lost in a digital setting isn’t always an easy feeling for any game to conjure up, so when a title can bring its environments to life like this… it really is a thing to see. I don’t think we’re at quite the same level of graphical beauty as a title like Kena: Bridge of Spirits or Red Dead Redemption II managed… but it’s not a million miles away.
As with many other sports games, PGA Tour features commentary from real commentators. I confess that I had no idea who any of them were before playing the game, but I daresay folks who regularly watch golf events on television will, and the inclusion of familiar voices in the commentary box will be another fun addition. One thing I’ve enjoyed about the commentary in PGA Tour is how the commentators will share their knowledge of not only each course, but most of the individual holes as well; rather than just commenting on events as they unfold, that little bit of extra information at the beginning is neat.
There are places where the commentary is limited, of course – as you’d expect from any sports game, really! I find that I hear a few lines repeated quite often, and in some situations the game only has a single line from the commentators, so there isn’t always a lot of variety. If, like me, you regularly miss your longer putts and end up having to take an extra shot, well… be prepared to hear the commentators take note of that. Over and over again!
Jokes aside, I’ve been having a fun time with PGA Tour. It reminds me of playing Actua Golf 2 way back when, and it’s been both an entertaining challenge and a surprisingly relaxing experience. I would never have chosen to go out and buy a golf game, but when I was browsing Game Pass it leapt out at me, and I’m glad I gave it a whirl. It’s not gonna be anyone’s “game of the year” or anything like that – not unless you’re a hardened golf fanatic! But I’ve sunk quite a few hours into the game by this point, and in spite of some limitations and a downright aggressive in-game storefront, I’ve had fun.
All titles discussed above are the copyright of their respective studio, developer, and/or publisher. Actua Golf 2 and Wii Sports are currently out of print, but second-hand copies are often available for purchase. EA Sports PGA Tour is out now for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series consoles. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Trekking with Dennis 