PGA Tour 2K21 (Switch) Review

There are a lot of golf games on the Nintendo Switch; there seems to be at least one or two every couple of months. There’s silly golf games, crazy golf games, at least 20 mini-putt ones but no real golf games. PGA Tour 2K21 is a real golf game, and you can play it super seriously or a bit less seriously.

PGA Tour 2K21 is developed by HB Studios, who are known for their series of games “The Golf Club”. Now under the 2K umbrella, it takes the underlying great golf game and adds a polish as you would expect from a 2K sports game. It’s also filled with real tournaments, commentators, sponsors, and players.

PGA Tour 2K21 allows you to play golf however you like. You can play it completely unassisted, something in the middle, or turn everything on to help you on your way. If you play unassisted, you’ll have to account for the wind yourself, feel the swing yourself, and read the greens all by yourself. It’s surprisingly hard, and you’ll have to take time to work your way through each shot just like you would in real life. Swings are done through either analogue stick (your choice) and the backswing timing isn’t accounted for just how you go through your forward swing.

If you’re not ready for that, you can instead turn on every assist imaginable. The game becomes something more akin to Mario Golf, with directional overlays on the ground and shot previews. There are no power drives, and the shot preview doesn’t give you the shot exactly, just where it might go as your swing will affect where it ends up. If you want to start easy and work your way up, you can switch how you play whenever you like, the harder you put the game, the more XP you gain.

The central part of the game is the PGA Tour mode; you’ll have to earn your place in the tour with some minor events first before you can make it to the big leagues. From there you’ll go around the US, playing over 15 different real-life courses over 30 various events. While the courses are superbly recreated from their real-life counterparts, you can’t help but feel some of them are a little bit boring (just a reflection on the PGA courses really). Some of the courses on offer are a significant challenge, with fast fairways and wavy greens, but others are just straight up and down. When we say you’ll have to work your way through the tour, it will be you, or anyone you want to be as you can’t play as the Pro players. MyPlayer is there to create your avatar, and dress them up. You’ll unlock more clothes, outfits and bling as you progress through your career. There’s XP to collect but it’s just for levelling up in rank, your stats don’t change, and you can only get better by being better or having better clubs.

What’s not boring is how the game is presented. During the leadup events and on the PGA tour itself the game is presented as if you were watching it on TV. There’s a commentary team consisting of Aussie Luke Elvy and PGA Tour pro Rich Beem who walk you through the shots, the courses and provide some banter along the way. There’s also another commentator John McCarthy who is the “man on the ground”, but the recordings of him seem too soft and the grand music of the game drowns him out quite often. The tour is also broken up randomly between shots with “highlights” from other players on tour (CPU players), and it just felt like it slowed me down. Sadly the Nintendo Switch version of the game is completely missing the crowd, while it might be period-correct at the moment with the COVID situation, the empty stands looks weird and there are no golf claps when you sink a long putt.

Outside of the tour, there are several other ways to play; you can play these by yourself or with others. You can also create an Online Society where you and some friends can tee up together in several modes and run through a full tournament together. In addition to regular Stroke Play, you can play Alt-Shot, Skins, Ambrose (called Scramble in the game).

The Switch version of the game graphics hold up well compared to the other consoles. The game is a little bit lower resolution, and a little bit more ugly but otherwise it plays and runs perfectly fine. You’ll see shadows pop in when the ball is flying through the air and trees go from a low quality model to a higher one. The game’s menus are slick, if not a little slow as it seems to always be on the internet for something.

As you would expect from a golf game, the game’s audio is subtle. Grandiose tour themes kick-off at the start of the round but other than that it’s the ping of your driver, and the environmental effects and you.

After some consternation from the developers on whether it would or wouldn’t have it, the Switch version does indeed have the course creator that HB Studio’s previous games are so well known for. At the time of writing there wasn’t a lot of variety up there yet, but with this feature being cross-plaform you’ll have no shortage of courses once the community starts filling in the gaps.

PGA Tour 2K21 is all you could want in a golf game, the relaxing yet sometimes maddening game of golf is recreated here perfectly in digital form. This year’s game with the 2K flair and added authenticity of real players and even more real courses propels the game further. If you’re at all into golf, you’ll be into this, and if like golf just a little bit you can now get into HB Studios’s golfing mastery.

Rating: 4/5