Operation Sports Forums - The Golf Club 2019 Impressions Thread

I've now played 63 holes on my XBox One X, all with Master clubs. I'm really diggin' this game on the X! It looks and feels fantastic. I'm really shocked at just how good it looks in 4K. I had prepared myself to be really disappointed with the looks of the SpeedTrees from watching most of the 1080p streams and videos of the game being played on standard and S XBox Ones. They look like a different generation on the X at 4K, and they show very little pop-in, and it's really not "pop-in" it's more like phase-in as some trees appear in the extreme distance. Everything with 350 yards appears naturally looking as the trees are brought into the scene during scrolling.

What really got my attention was how good the "Full" camera setting looks and how it adds so much to the intimacy I feel with my on-screen surrogate now! :-* I use the "Full" camera option from tee to green and as much as it makes me feel connected to pelting a drive off the tee, it draws me more into moment when putting... it just feels like I'm controlling my player, rather than a remote control golfer who is further removed from the swing camera in the default, "Wide" view.

I just played a Society tournament round at TPC Boston in the official "Open" society, and shot a 71, with six birdies. I put two balls in the water due to not getting my tempo right and losing distance... it felt totally natural and believable - I loved it! I am having considerably more trouble getting perfect/perfect tempo in TGC 2019. In fact, I say that so far it's probably only 15% of the time, whereas in TGC 2, it's like 80%, for me.

My two biggest disappointments so far is that there are no quality/performance options for the X. While the 30 FPS locked frame rate the game has at its 4K res on the X is smoother than I thought it would be, I can't help but wonder if my inability to manage the tempo any better than I am is because my senses can't adapt to the drop from the 40 to 45 FPS frame rates I was used to in TGC 2? I'll keep playing at it and see if this isn't something I adapt to over time.

The second major disappointment is that the spoiler leaderboards of TGC 2 haven't been fixed. When I played the Open Society tournament at Boston, I chose a ghost to play with. After we finished the first hole, which he'd bogeyed, the mini-score status in the upper left corner showed him at +1 through 1. The leaderboard then came up between holes and showed him at +2 after 2 holes. His score was reported throughout the round as one hole ahead of the hole we were actually playing through the finish :( I just don't understand why the game can't recognize which ghosts I've selected to play with, and adjust their score reporting status on the leaderboard to the hole being played with me ???

Oh, and the new offset playing companion cameras are just awesome. It gives the multiplayer experience so much more personality and perspective realism. I wish they could be tweaked by the player a bit more to get a little more down to head level, but it's far cry better than watching them from their swing camera. It's cool to watch a long approach shot from the right rear of a right handed golfer when you can see the shot in its entirety from that angle. The ball trajectory looks so cool from that perspective!

I've played two TPC courses, Boston and Deere Run, and there's some special ambience about them. I think HBS has done a really good job with them as they've got a presence that feels like a TPC course.

Finally, I started playing Arctic Fury's The House on the Cliff after seeing it an a stream on the XBox One S, and being concerned over the barren look of the SpeedTrees. They look fabulous on the XBox One X, and better yet, their erratic 11 MPH wind behavior doesn't look quite as spastic in the 4K res, for some reason.

I need to play a round on a course in high wind where the trees are going to be casting shadows on the green, to see what sort of kaleidoscopic effect that has at 4K. I'll report back on that later. For right now though, I'm as tickled as I've been with a golf game since PGA Championship 2000 on the PC! I think there's a challenging learning curve ahead of me. This game produces a greater variety of shot results for a player of my average skill, and I can reconcile them all to this point.

I've also had a number of cases of one error offsetting the effects of another error. Like Gdog, I'm prone to go "perfect/fast" on my tempo, but I'm often spared by my fade swing path that negates it. That reflects reality pretty well, IMO. I'm relishing in the fact that not much feels regimented to me right now. That probably will not be the case with more skilled players, but all I can do is share my experience.