Reviewing sports games always comes with a bit of an extra challenge. Previewing them even more so. Sports games are made for a very specific audience, who are mostly interested in minute changes and specific community concerns, but as a critic you also have to🐽 respect the game as a singular creation that stands on its own. With PGA Tour 2K23, it’s a little easier. Taking a leaf out of WWE’s book, 2K took a year off from golf last year, having previously converted The Golf Game to PGA Tour, so a♐s a result it’s still a series finding its feet in many ways. From what I’ve played, it’s a swing and a hit.
The biggest change this time around is the introduction of the three-click swing system. In previous entries, you needed to pull the right thumb stick back and flick it forward to swing. That still exists, and still feels unnecessarily difficult, but it’s now accompanied by a button system. With the swing system, I need to pinch the stick rather than flick it, which takes away a lot of fun and immersion. Here, you hold A until your power bar fills a white circle (with the aim of stopping it in the centre), before an arm swings around the circle.🌊 You tap A when the arm is at 12 o’clock,⛄ and again when it’s at 6 o’clock, and the further you are from that, the more you slice it. Much more intuitive, though it’s a shame swing stick play still feels sensitive and slow.
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You couldꦺ argue it’s a bit♒ more arcadey, but the customisation of loft, spin, swing, club, and stroke maintains a sense of technical mastery. I’m also not sure it suits a sports sim to deliberately exclude people who want to play it. FIFA is head and shoulders the most popular sports sim not just because of the popularity of football as a global sport, but because of how openly the game invites you in. PGA Tour 2K23 has that same feeling. It now has an Everybody’s Golf vibe to it instead of limiting its reach to hardened golf fans.
We had access to a handful of pros, but I opted for Lydia Ko for some female representation, and Tiger Woods himself. I’m not sure I’m enough of a golf expert to know how realis𒀰tic they were to real world stats, but they at least had great likeness. It feels like a step down from the sweat catching detail of NBA 2K’s pixel perfect basketball players, more like the ‘video game version’ we see in the likes of MLB: The Show. However, golf has the considerable advantage of taking place in gorgeous scenery, which football st♐adiums and basketball courts lack.
As for the gameplay, I found the golf itself to have a healthy pick up and play element to it,🐓 especially with the three-click swing system. The game’s default club and shot selection never steers you too wrong, and even if you never move your aim at all you’ll be mostly fine until it comes to putting. I fine tuned a few elements as I to☂ok into account the wind, or applied more loft, back spin, et cetera, but there were several layers of mechanical depth my playthrough didn’t have time to plumb to.
However, it seems your mi🗹leage may vary. I haven’t played a golf game without an Italian plumber in it since Tiger Woods PGA Tour ‘14, so I wasn’t going into it as an expert, but I came out fine. Admittedly playing on the Casual difficulty the hands-on was locked to, I recorded a -7 with Ko across 18 holes and a -8 with Tiger off the back nine. There were others present who were racking up scores of +8 playing the same course though, so please don’t confuse 🐽my greatness for the game’s ease. When I play for real I’ll bump up the difficulty and take a few more risks, aiming for more reward in the long run, but maybe taking more lumps on the way.
Part of the reason I’m able to regale you with these tales of glory is the putting. Even the devs told us putting was the biggest challenge, but it didn’t seem anything too tricky for me - though again, others struggled more. It certainly has some challenging factors and less room for error compared to the other shots, but it’s very satisfying when you sink it. There’s a grid to indicate the lie of the green and a way to check the line of your strokꦗe (assuming perfect play), so the game definitely provides you the tools to overcome the precise attention needed. You can only check the line once, which feels stingy on Casual🙈 if the devs feel putting is the most challenging element, but then I managed fine without it, so maybe I’m asking a little much.
PGA Tour 2K23 won’t tear up any trees, because it doesn’t matter🌄 how good a golf game is, you’re only really going to g🃏et golf fans playing it. However, while previous iterations have struggled to balance, ease, challenge, approachability, and technical realism, 2K23 feels like it’s landing right on the green. The full game just needs to make this putt for a birdie.
