The Golf Club

i didn't see a patch on the pc side, could be a downloaded it after it came out. but other than some (hopefully only) day 1 flaky online stuff the performance has been pretty good.

i've accepted the 3 people who requested to join the society, but it doesn't seem to be updating the member list quickly. So if it doesn't show you in by tomorrow let me know.

I wonder if that is an Xbox thing: telling devs to store certain assets on their Azure cloud, so that they can claim faster and smaller installs... Just a guess, though.

Any word on if the social stuff is cross-platform? I'd like to play with you PC folks from way over here in PS4-ville.

Played for a few hours. Lots of training, a bit of character creation, and played my first round in career mode.

- Love the swing mechanics. Feels really intuitive. I know right away before even seeing the rating of the swing when I screw up.

- Putting is fun but hard. Took me awhile before I started getting a feel for it.

-The randomizer in the character creation makes for truly frightening monstrosities.

-The network is on fire. Which is really frustrating because it boots you from career mode and makes for some really long loading screens in the menu when you disconnect. Only good thing is you can continue exactly where you left off when you reconnect.

-Highlight of the night: Hitting a 32 ft putt for birdie.

-Lowlight: Back to back kasplooshes in a pond

Conclusion- Really like the game. Hope the network stuff gets straightened out.

Got a couple more rounds in last night and enjoyed them a lot, but I think I'm going to try switching to controller. The last time I played a PC golf game may well have been the old Front Page Sports series, and I remember the mouse-swing mechanic in it being something resembling 1:1. This is definitely not that. Putting excepted, it feels like I can either do a half swing or a full swing, but any other fine-tuning has to be done via the shot-shaping options. I can live with that on a controller, I suspect, but on the mouse it feels wonky to have the ability to doing varying degrees of drawback and push forward and not have them reflect well on the screen. This is particularly noteworthy for short, on-the-fringe chips, where I feel like I only either barely and unrealistically tap the ball or end up significantly overshooting my mark because it's a full swing.

On the bright side, no server hiccups for me while playing a couple "season" rounds, and the ball flight and reactions to the ground feel really good (despite the ground textures not being very visually interactive to the ball).

ubrakto wrote:

but I think I'm going to try switching to controller.

controller is definitely the way to go for this game

ubrakto wrote:

Some worrying stuff here. At the same time, Pastapadre posted to Twitter that he'd have a review up later today, but that the game is "really good." No idea what platform he played on, but perhaps the technical issues are more prevalent on console than on PC?

His review is up and he played on console:

I've wanted to shut off the console in frustration or throw the controller at times.

The bottom of the article says he played on PS4 and he does mention the graphical pop-in.

Yeah, I saw that last night and forgot to circle back around to link it here. It's a good review and, despite some of those quibbles, he gave it a lot of praise.

Anyone else creeped out by the squirrels?

Edit: Guess that's a no on the squirrels!

Switched to tour clubs last night and boy are they sensitive. You mess up with these you're going to shank the heck of that golf ball. I'm starting to get used to it though. I played another 18 hole course in my career mode and finished at +3.

Network is still crap though. Not quite as bad as launch night but I got booted from career mode once mid match and then once I finished I couldn't get back into career mode to play another course so I just called it a night. They definitely have some work to do with their servers.

Completed my first round using a gamepad, and, yeah, there's a huge difference in the feel. It's fantastic, almost to the point I'm irritated at how poor the mouse controls feel by comparison. Definitely not going back.

Now, I started out scoring a lot worse than using my mouse (+16 on front nine after an 11 on the first hole), but as I got more used to the feel I started doing a lot better (+1 on the back nine). I still don't have a good feel for left/right breaks on putts, and I'm figuratively in the tall grass when chipping, but I'm very, very encouraged. I've also had no connectivity issues whatsoever so far (PC), beyond some slow access times in menus.

It's still early, but I definitely feel satisfied with my purchase.

Edit: I posted this in the bargain thread instead in the main discussion area.

So I have been playing **The Golf Club 2** a lot since I bought it this week. I was spotty with my shots, hitting some good ones for a while, then slicing and hooking them. From the feedback graph it looked like I wasn't always pulling / pushing the right analog stick on the controller straight. It felt like I was, but according to the graph I wasn't. The fact that I moved up to the middle difficulty clubs made me pay for my mis-hits even more.

After a quick search I found a pointer that helped me start being more consistent moving that stick straight back and forth. I set the controller on my desk and hold the stick in the 12 & 6 o'clock positions. The tempo should be to pull it back smoothly and when you get to the top of the swing quickly push it forward. I practiced this technique a bit and then played Pebble Beach and scored a 73, which is good for me (Pebble Beach is a relatively easy course I think). I'll have to try this technique on one of the more difficult courses I played.

The game is still on sale for $17 for a couple more days. I recommend it.

The sale is only on PC - dang. I have been hoping to pick it up for a while now, but am not sure I would get the full price out of it - I hit a difficulty wall on the last game and left in frustration.

Played Tiger Woods since 2002, easily 1,000 hrs per iteration bought. This is not an "arcade-like" golf game like Tiger Woods !

First round +16, kept pushing everything left. Found out later that this was because my down swing was too fast. Sixth round all square E. CHING !

This game is all about feel. Driving, short game and especially chips and putts. Lie is important and will kick to left or right from unlevel ground. Spin is a nightmare, can't get anything to come back. Fades and draws are a joy though, but I'm finding under-hitting tough atm. Also the practice swing feature is amazing, as you can check you have perfect swing tempo pre shot.

Bought in sale, very happy as Tiger is ridiculously easy. This is a challenge ! (for now)

Playing this now on PC. Anyone feel free to hit me up on Discord if you fancy a "quick" 18 or so.