PGA Tour 2K21 review: "Like a Bryson DeChambeau drive, it’s on the right trajectory"

(Image: © 2K)

12DOVE Verdict

PGA Tour 2K21 offers the best stroke play in years, with deep and rich shot and swing craft. Only a lean career mode proves its handicap.

Pros

  • +

    Excellent golf gameplay

  • +

    Shot craft and swing mechanics are detailed and rich

  • +

    Balances the satisfaction and frustration of real-life golf very well

Cons

  • -

    Career mode lacks any real depth

  • -

    Familiar cringe-worthy golf game tropes

  • -

    No real-life stars and limited real-life courses

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Golf is hard. It's built on fine margins of error and details that can lead to club-breaking mistakes but also some of the greatest satisfaction in sports when done right. Shot-to-shot, PGA Tour 2K21 encapsulates this brilliantly and offers a genuinely fun golf sim that scratches the iron-swinging itch, no matter your previous experience or loyalties.

Fast facts: PGA Tour 2K21

(Image credit: 2K)

Release date: 21 August 2020
Platform(s): PS4, Xbox One, PC 
Developer: HB Studios
Publisher: 2K Games

PGA Tour 2K21's main strengths lie in its solid and very enjoyable fundamentals, which nail the knife-edge feel of real-life play. It's simultaneously forgiving and challenging, too - delivering accessible gameplay that is straightforward to pick up, but also detailed and rich enough to cater to those looking for more. 

You quickly discover that there's a strong emphasis on shot craft and swing management. Draws, fades, topspin, backspin, and loft; all are present to the best approach to every situation, but also increase the difficulty of your shot. What results is the right balance of skill and jeopardy, and frustration and satisfaction, with every swing. You also have to factor in swing tempo and rhythm. Perfect shots are possible but elusive, meaning that when you do execute one, it's exactly the kind of feeling that keeps you playing. Get it wrong and experience tough, but fair, results. 

(Image credit: 2K)

Thankfully, you're not left on your own to master all these nuances. Shot feedback shows your tempo, and swing lines are important aids and reference points, empowering you to improve stroke by stroke. On the green, alongside the familiar gradient colours and grid lines, a putting preview line is welcome – and limiting its use to, at most, one look per hole means that you're still reliant on your own technique (and eyeballs). Neatly you can play all your rounds like this by disabling the HUD – solely relying on your skills, your interpretation of the conditions, and the Yardage Book to further the immersion and realism.

Fairway to heaven

The character customization process is another roaring success. It's multi-faceted and provides myriad options to make your golfer look however you want, right down to height and weight, and there are lots of brands available to outfit your player with too. This is all housed under the MyPlayer section, a familiar element from 2K sports games, and the hub from which you manage all facets of your onscreen alter-ego.

(Image credit: 2K)

Your golfer's career is where the most fun is had. From the off, you can jump straight into the PGA Tour, or begin with an amateur tournament where top placers get their tour cards and progress to the main tour. The latter provides a useful journey enabling you to hone your skills; while the PGA Tour proper comprises around 30 events. It's linear but very enjoyable across its 25 hours, specifically due to the moreishness of every shot, and offers a good mix of reward, and challenge.

Throughout your career, you earn experience points – but this is a largely underwhelming mechanic, with the points you get from tournaments only unlocking new clothes and clubs. Other career progression features are neat on paper but thoroughly undercooked. Sponsorship Contracts are career challenges that unlock clubs and clothes; in-round targets add some extra challenge; and player rivalries are challenge-based competitions, that are also quite baffling - why exactly do I have a rivalry with Jim Furyk? Given the lack of golf ability advancement, more purpose to the leveling-up of my player would be welcome, along with more reason to upgrade my clubs, too. You can easily do the whole season, successfully, with the default set.

Rough with the smooth

Wherever you go, you’re accompanied by disappointingly familiar golf game-isms: cringeworthy commentary that's been exhausted by your fourth round; boring crowds; goofy player animations; and skippable empty-camera shots between holes, and shots. Where PGA 2K21 does deviate from previous golf games, however, is in the difficulty settings, through which you can make career feel fresher by amending opponent ability, and course conditions to find a pleasingly challenging balance.

While career is great fun, it's too lean and simple to be a premise you return to month after month. Seemingly positioned as a route to get you playing a season quickly and easily, there is no opportunity to build a golfer up from hack to pro, investing XP in skills and abilities, and acquiring a repertoire of shots. This role-playing element of career modes is a successful staple of the genre, so given PGA 2K21's heavy emphasis on realism elsewhere, it feels like a missed opportunity.

(Image credit: 2K)

However, this level-playing-field approach does have its positives: as the player base grows, online play should be great fun given no one can beat other players simply by out-levelling them. This means that the net-based options - 1v1 matchplay games, 2v2 alternate shot games, wager matches, and online societies (where you can play custom seasons with your crew) will be competitive, if the game attracts a large audience in the coming months.

Long live your noble green

Unfortunately, there are notable absences in career when it comes to famous courses and faces. Courses are limited to a few handfuls of PGA Tour locations and the famous players present are not playable, which is a huge miss. The Tiger Woods series would have been rubbish without the option to be, you know, Tiger Woods.

Where 2K19 makes up for this a little is with the robust Course Creator. It's intuitive, has helpful presets and easy options to manipulate terrain, and the option to playtest every hole. The creator also enables you to download and play courses other players publish. Given the community is likely to recreate famous courses not available in the game, this is a great means to keep things fresh.

(Image credit: 2K)

PGA 2K21 manages to be a strong, less po-faced successor to The Golf Club games, while also channeling some of what made EA's classics great, and continuing to establish the series as the go-to golf game. Shot craft rarely fails to satisfy, but it is less successful as a career simulator. Further refinement and polish in that field - as well as more official courses and playable stars - would be welcome if the PGA branding is here to stay. For now, like one of Bryson DeChambeau’s post-lockdown drives, it’s on the right trajectory.  

Reviewed on PS4. Code provided by the publisher.

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Rob Dwiar

Rob is the Deputy Editor of sister site, TechRadar Gaming, and has been in the games and tech industry for years. Prior to a recent stint as Gaming Editor at WePC, Rob was the Commissioning Editor for Hardware at 12DOVE, and was on the hardware team for more than four years, since its inception in late 2018. He is also a writer on games and has had work published over the last six years or so at the likes of Eurogamer, RPS, PCGN, and more. He is also a qualified landscape and garden designer, so does that in his spare time, while he is also an expert on the virtual landscapes and environments of games and loves to write about them too, including in an upcoming book on the topic!