PGA Tour 2K25 Demo Available Today, Post Your Impressions

[lowpaiddonkey10]

Re: PGA Tour 2K25 Demo Available Today, Post Your Impressions

Apparently they patched the demo again:

https://x.com/PGATOUR2K/status/1890192511408513253?t=F5AgK62D4SVPzB2uKva77g&s=19

�� Patch Notes 2.13 ��
- Miscellaneous Quest fixes;
- Addressed concerns related to teleporting balls (the ball will suddenly go to a location it was not hit towards);
- Addressed concerns related to aim marker, where the shot preview would be incorrect;
- Addressed Swing Stick concerns relating to getting perfect Swing Path when the player's input wasn't perfect.
- Addressed concerns allowing players to take shots from inside the WM Phoenix Open stands geometry on hole #16.

Sounds like this patch also fixed the "J" swing exploit, where you could swing in a looping motion and still hit perfect at the contact point.

Legend feels a little harder after yesterday's update too.

[pietasterp]

Re: PGA Tour 2K25 Demo Available Today, Post Your Impressions

Am I seeing this incorrectly, or is the (diagonal) swing not back-and-forth on a straight line? I play with a draw bias, and it looks to me that while you take the club back (stick down) on roughly a 7-o'clock line, the downswing/through-swing is on a line approximately halfway between 12 and 1 o'clock (not exactly 1-o'clock, which would be a straight line through the center from the backswing position).

I might just not be seeing it correctly.

[crimsondog4]

Re: PGA Tour 2K25 Demo Available Today, Post Your Impressions

The beauty of this game is going to be alot more obvious when you play at Dawn/Dusk. The lighting in 2k25 is some of the best lighting I've ever seen in a sports game, and Scottsdale is the worst course to highlight these improvements. It's a flat course with very little plant life and fairly flat greens and bunkers. Once you play courses early morning, that have rolling hills and deep bunkers, the improvements will be obvious. if you play around for a few hours in the practice facility on approach shots, you can begin to see what I'm talking about. The course creator is going to take this game to a completely new level of beauty as well.

[MrArlingtonBeach]

Re: PGA Tour 2K25 Demo Available Today, Post Your Impressions

The beauty of this game is going to be alot more obvious when you play at Dawn/Dusk. The lighting in 2k25 is some of the best lighting I've ever seen in a sports game, and Scottsdale is the worst course to highlight these improvements. It's a flat course with very little plant life and fairly flat greens and bunkers. Once you play courses early morning, that have rolling hills and deep bunkers, the improvements will be obvious. if you play around for a few hours in the practice facility on approach shots, you can begin to see what I'm talking about. The course creator is going to take this game to a completely new level of beauty as well.

The videos that have been shown of Royal Portrush, Riviera, Oakmont, and Pebble Beach do show that courses present better in different lighting. Really looking forward to seeing how those tracks, and all the created ones, look in the full version of the game.

[MrArlingtonBeach]

Re: PGA Tour 2K25 Demo Available Today, Post Your Impressions

Am I seeing this incorrectly, or is the (diagonal) swing not back-and-forth on a straight line? I play with a draw bias, and it looks to me that while you take the club back (stick down) on roughly a 7-o'clock line, the downswing/through-swing is on a line approximately halfway between 12 and 1 o'clock (not exactly 1-o'clock, which would be a straight line through the center from the backswing position).

I might just not be seeing it correctly.

Zcolbster, a TGCTours Platinum player, seems to have found the same thing.

https://x.com/zcolbsterTwitch/status/1884690507399299522

"An observation I had after recording is that draw/fade shots are not going to be as simple as rotating the controller and hitting straight unless your contact and swing plane attributes match."

[pietasterp]

Re: PGA Tour 2K25 Demo Available Today, Post Your Impressions

Good to know I'm not crazy.

I don't love that, to be honest, although I understand for difficulty's sake it makes some sense. It just seems awkward and feels like I am bending/manipulating too much on the downswing, and not a constant downswing/through-swing that just flows. Almost analogous to forcibly re-routing the club on the downswing to get it into a 'slot' or something.

Although, I suppose as a stickler for reality, maybe that's not that far off from my actual golf swing...

[crimsondog4]

Re: PGA Tour 2K25 Demo Available Today, Post Your Impressions

I tried hitting a flop shot on a steep downslope and noticed an even larger offset from bottom to top. I think this is intentional. What I'm learning is that you can't compare 2k23, to 2k25. The shot IQ on 2k25 is so much closer to golf difficulty in real life. Meaning : If you want to attempt a flop shot on a steep downslope, cool, go ahead, but it's going to be damn near impossible.

[crimsondog4]

Re: PGA Tour 2K25 Demo Available Today, Post Your Impressions

That said, what could be happening here - is that the offset is entirely determined by the slope you are hitting off of. If you hit off a flat lie, you shouldn't see that offset from bottom to top. If you hit a ball 3 feet below your feet, you are going to see a massive offset. That's what Im thinking is going on here.

[pietasterp]

Re: PGA Tour 2K25 Demo Available Today, Post Your Impressions

I tried hitting a flop shot on a steep downslope and noticed an even larger offset from bottom to top. I think this is intentional. What I'm learning is that you can't compare 2k23, to 2k25. The shot IQ on 2k25 is so much closer to golf difficulty in real life. Meaning : If you want to attempt a flop shot on a steep downslope, cool, go ahead, but it's going to be damn near impossible.

Did you skull it 150 yards over the green? 'Cuz that's what I do when I try stupid stuff like that IRL.

[crimsondog4]

Re: PGA Tour 2K25 Demo Available Today, Post Your Impressions

Not that bad - I do wish we had the ability to skull the crap out of the ball, or chunk it a foot behind the ball like true amateurs golfers do all the time. That would be great fun.

[RIFRIG]

Re: PGA Tour 2K25 Demo Available Today, Post Your Impressions

The beauty of this game is going to be alot more obvious when you play at Dawn/Dusk. The lighting in 2k25 is some of the best lighting I've ever seen in a sports game, and Scottsdale is the worst course to highlight these improvements. It's a flat course with very little plant life and fairly flat greens and bunkers. Once you play courses early morning, that have rolling hills and deep bunkers, the improvements will be obvious. if you play around for a few hours in the practice facility on approach shots, you can begin to see what I'm talking about. The course creator is going to take this game to a completely new level of beauty as well.

Some of the best lighting you’ve seen in a sports game. There is zero & I mean ‘Zero’ lighting effects on the demo. No atmosphere,haze or flare…..nothing. Are you a Nextmaker 🤔.

[scagwi]

Re: PGA Tour 2K25 Demo Available Today, Post Your Impressions

The lighting in 2k25 is some of the best lighting I've ever seen in a sports game

Honestly, I've always had a hard time with lighting in TGC based games.
The shadows can be so dark and so hard to see anything


Whether that's "realistic" or not, I'm sort of indifferent in that ultimately it's a game on my TV and I need to be able to see what the heck I'm doin'! haha


Reasonable minds can always disagree. I've never loved the lighting personally

[MrArlingtonBeach]

Re: PGA Tour 2K25 Demo Available Today, Post Your Impressions

Lighting in 2K23 was pretty bad...trees looked like they were glowing or shiny if the sun hit them a certain way, and you couldn't build a course with any holes playing even slightly into the sun, as it would blow everything out and you couldn't see anything.

Draw distance in 2K23 was poor, too, as you had to make grasses 10 feet tall just to get them to show up from 150-200 yards when designing a course.

I think 2K25 has better lighting and visuals from what we've seen in videos captured at the WM Phoenix Open event (ApexHound's video of Pebble Beach, and Seamount's videos of Royal Portrush and Oakmont), but Scottsdale in the demo was a poor choice for showing off the "updated" visuals.

I get why they did it, based on the real tour schedule, but it was underwhelming when visual improvements were supposed to be one of the highlights of this new game.

[Ac3way]

Re: PGA Tour 2K25 Demo Available Today, Post Your Impressions

Playing few hours on practice field really looks very different from Scottsdale. Dynamic lighting and moving cloud system really creates awesome atmosphere. I think 2k25 can create good looking visuals on full game, but maybe not every aspect and not all the time.

And compared to playing 2k23 with no wind at Scottsdale back-9 that game is much easier, physics are lacking and visuals are worse. And swing system + pure gameplay makes the biggest difference. 2k23 feels more of videogame and 2k25 a little bit more of like real golf, but not too much.

Sure there are still issues on game and some people would like more of tv-broadcast style. But i think this is good balance with presentation and playing golf. Maybe for bigger tournaments during career mode more of presentation would be nice addition.

[crimsondog4]

Re: PGA Tour 2K25 Demo Available Today, Post Your Impressions

As mentioned already in my previous message - Dawn/Dusk will really show improvements. Scottsdale at Noon tells us nothin