Re: Rory McIlroy PGA Tour
I was a big fan of both the PC version (going all the way back to its original incarnation as "Leaderboard Golf" on the Commodore64) and the XBox 2004 version. With regard to the PC titles, I think it was just simply the most realistic golf sim out there, and the first sports game that really knocked my socks off in terms of visual appeal. And the swing interface became a de facto standard in the genre, so it was sort of a standard bearer (using that term a lot in this thread for some reason...) for golf games for a really long time.
The XBox version was great in my opinion because the swing interface was the best console golf swing interface I have ever used. It was smooth, more-or-less realtime (if memory serves), and pretty intuitive - in other words, I understood why shots reacted the way they did when I hit them. And it was real golf - no lightning bolts, applying spin after-the-fact, battleships on the course, etc. etc. etc. It took the sport seriously and trusted people to embrace it. Which, I suppose in retrospect, may be a reason the product crashed and burned....
But both are still highly playable today. With the exception of the oh-so-irritating letterboxed zoom-in when you hit an approach close, Links on Xbox was about as good as golf on consoles got in that generation.
I was a big fan of both the PC version (going all the way back to its original incarnation as "Leaderboard Golf" on the Commodore64) and the XBox 2004 version. With regard to the PC titles, I think it was just simply the most realistic golf sim out there, and the first sports game that really knocked my socks off in terms of visual appeal. And the swing interface became a de facto standard in the genre, so it was sort of a standard bearer (using that term a lot in this thread for some reason...) for golf games for a really long time.
The XBox version was great in my opinion because the swing interface was the best console golf swing interface I have ever used. It was smooth, more-or-less realtime (if memory serves), and pretty intuitive - in other words, I understood why shots reacted the way they did when I hit them. And it was real golf - no lightning bolts, applying spin after-the-fact, battleships on the course, etc. etc. etc. It took the sport seriously and trusted people to embrace it. Which, I suppose in retrospect, may be a reason the product crashed and burned....
But both are still highly playable today. With the exception of the oh-so-irritating letterboxed zoom-in when you hit an approach close, Links on Xbox was about as good as golf on consoles got in that generation.
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