HB Studios Next-Gen golf game: The Golf Club

[Inuyasha]

bought this game today and what a joy. I'm a casual golf videogamer and I liked the Tiger series since it was catered to my type of player, but this one is just phenomenal. What a breath of fresh air!

[10spro]

Finished Swindon Downs over the weekend posting a +10 after four rounds. I liked the course, just wished the terrible, unpredictable wind would not cost me as many shots as it did. The greens were tricky too though. Having said that, we all have to go with it I guess. I could only see Divot's score (good rounds for you btw) and a certain DWT. This guy is not from planet earth.

[Diablo25]

Give CDC - Mojave Palms Resort a shot if you want to play a challenging desert course. There is one par 3 that has a TINY green but other than that I really liked it. Greens were tough.

http://www.pocketscout.us/The-Golf-Club ... ms-resort/

[Leebo33]

a certain DWT. This guy is not from planet earth.

How does he/she get so much more distance than anyone else off of the tee?

[MERACE]

a certain DWT. This guy is not from planet earth.

How does he/she get so much more distance than anyone else off of the tee?

It could be that he played his round with a different wind condition. That's another reason why I would like the tournament/tour creator to have the option to set the wind conditions for each round.

The more interesting observation is that about 99% of his shots are laser straight lines down the middle of the cone.


-MERACE

[Danimal]

I haven't played this game but assuming the swing mechanic works like TW with the stick this is easily accomplished. People can makeshift guides so that shots are never offline. Why people take the time to do this I have no idea, life is great if you get outside and look around.

[DivotMaker]

I haven't played this game but assuming the swing mechanic works like TW with the stick this is easily accomplished. People can makeshift guides so that shots are never offline. Why people take the time to do this I have no idea, life is great if you get outside and look around.

Agree 100%. However, HB Studios has a way to monitor and detect users who hit straight "all the time" and they have stated they will be pulling scores off the leaderboards and potentially banning repeat offenders. That shouldn't be too messy though.....

[10spro]

I haven't played this game but assuming the swing mechanic works like TW with the stick this is easily accomplished. People can makeshift guides so that shots are never offline. Why people take the time to do this I have no idea, life is great if you get outside and look around.

Merace and I were talking about it last week. I would hate to doubt any DSP'er come to those conditions and I don't know who he/she is but anything is possible. The swing mechanic works the same basically, and the wind may have been non existent when it was played for this gamer. Still, that's a heck of a good score.

[DivotMaker]

PS4 patch is out.....have not seen the patch notes posted yet.....

[J_Cauthen]

PS4 patch is out.....have not seen the patch notes posted yet.....

I've played 16 holes now at four different courses with the patch. Here are the things I was looking for:

1.) Putting elevation and distance is now easily viewable from the swing camera.
2.) Frame rate improvement is marginal, but detectable. I still find Ross Hollow Golf Club to still be unplayable due to sluggish frame rates, but where I was finding Centennial Oaks Golf Club (beta) to be sluggish in spots before, I now see an improvement. There were several tee shots where I'd have to make several swing attempts before I could 'mesh' with the required frame rate for the current environment... not so in these spots today.
3.) I finally saw names of *some* of the other players in a tournament I created a little over a week ago, where I wasn't seeing any before However, DLW1964 (a guy on my friend's list who saw the tournament stood at ~ -100 and Tim was like -64... it looked like the scoreboard was taking away their unplayed final round from their total, assuming they shot 72 under par for the final round.
4.) I still couldn't play with the ghost of another player in my tournament as it didn't identify them as being available, even though I know some of them have completed rounds in advance of me.
5.) The menus were a lot more responsive.

Overall, this already feels like a better game. I haven't had time to put it through all of its paces as there are a number of courses and corruption issues I want to check out. I don't know whether this is a product of the mod or not, but I had one 98% tee shots, two 99% tee shots, and two 98% approach shots in my 16 hoes of play. I either saw 100%, or 92/93%, when I'd be off a little before. Too early to draw a conclusion on that sample though.

As for the tournament corruption and anomalies I'm still seeing with mine; I hope that's a by-product of it having been created prior to the patch, and that post patch created tournaments will not be plagued with these niggling problems.

[J_Cauthen]

bought this game today and what a joy. I'm a casual golf videogamer and I liked the Tiger series since it was catered to my type of player, but this one is just phenomenal. What a breath of fresh air!

Which version did you buy? Either was, I think you'll be even more impressed after you've played with the patch. It's helped shore the PS4 version for sure, and I know there are even bigger and better things coming to this game next month!

[Leadfoot5]

Sure hope the patch makes new tournaments or tours work like they should. The DSP Pre-Patch Tour wasn't that fun with all the glitchy-ness of the leaderboards, and two crashes that blew good rounds for me.

[DivotMaker]

and a certain DWT. This guy is not from planet earth.

DLW1964 is from the Tiger Woods forums and he is a pretty good player. Not sure how he shot -103, but I can assure you if he IS cheating and hitting every shot perfectly straight, HBS will detect it and deal with him privately. It is just such a freaking shame that we can't rely on people to play the games as they were designed without resorting to circumventing the game code or other nefarious methods.

I suggest we password protect any future tours/tournaments to keep non-DSP folks out.

[Leadfoot5]

and a certain DWT. This guy is not from planet earth.

DLW1964 is from the Tiger Woods forums and he is a pretty good player. Not sure how he shot -103, but I can assure you if he IS cheating and hitting every shot perfectly straight, HBS will detect it and deal with him privately. It is just such a freaking shame that we can't rely on people to play the games as they were designed without resorting to circumventing the game code or other nefarious methods.

I suggest we password protect any future tours/tournaments to keep non-DSP folks out.

Hey, for what it's worth, the leader board had me at -71 for a number of rounds after one of my crashes. I think it cleared up by the end of the Tour, but you guys can tell me what you see....

[J_Cauthen]

and a certain DWT. This guy is not from planet earth.

DLW1964 is from the Tiger Woods forums and he is a pretty good player. Not sure how he shot -103, but I can assure you if he IS cheating and hitting every shot perfectly straight, HBS will detect it and deal with him privately. It is just such a freaking shame that we can't rely on people to play the games as they were designed without resorting to circumventing the game code or other nefarious methods.

I suggest we password protect any future tours/tournaments to keep non-DSP folks out.

Hey, for what it's worth, the leader board had me at -71 for a number of rounds after one of my crashes. I think it cleared up by the end of the Tour, but you guys can tell me what you see....

I'm sure it's a scoreboard error because he was like 25 under through 3 rounds, which is still smokin', but it's like the leaderboard thinks he used only 188 strokes for 72 holes, instead of 54 holes. I didn't think about using a password because the non-official tournaments seem to be so lightly played. I'm really not sure there's enough interest in The Golf Club here to warrant any sort of ongoing play either. I joined TGC Tours yesterday, and I expect to play it pretty regularly... I think we'll just have to feel this out as it develops. I predict there will be renewed interest in this game in late October though

[DivotMaker]

and a certain DWT. This guy is not from planet earth.

DLW1964 is from the Tiger Woods forums and he is a pretty good player. Not sure how he shot -103, but I can assure you if he IS cheating and hitting every shot perfectly straight, HBS will detect it and deal with him privately. It is just such a freaking shame that we can't rely on people to play the games as they were designed without resorting to circumventing the game code or other nefarious methods.

I suggest we password protect any future tours/tournaments to keep non-DSP folks out.

Hey, for what it's worth, the leader board had me at -71 for a number of rounds after one of my crashes. I think it cleared up by the end of the Tour, but you guys can tell me what you see....

Did not see your scores as I only saw DLW at -103 and my score at -54 which is the correct score....

[dbdynsty25]

Post patch...short game still pisses me off to no end. I absolutely CANNOT stand it. I'm about to shelve this turd. It's inexcusable if you ask me. How is everything outside of 20 yards so perfect, but anything inside is complete and utter horseshit? I just don't get how they get the physics so wrong...both with the swings and with the ball roll.

[J_Cauthen]

Post patch...short game still pisses me off to no end. I absolutely CANNOT stand it. I'm about to shelve this turd. It's inexcusable if you ask me. How is everything outside of 20 yards so perfect, but anything inside is complete and utter horseshit? I just don't get how they get the physics so wrong...both with the swings and with the ball roll.

I agree that the short game is woefully lacking in The Golf Club. It requires you to play a different game from 15 to 30 yards from the hole. I don't like having to hit a lofted flop shot from 24 yards out, when there's nothing between me and the hole but fairway fringe and green One thing that Tiger 13 did that appealed to me was to incorporate a realistic pitching game, in both feel, looks, and results. If The Golf Club could remotely capture that, it would be a better game.

[Rodster]

The most noticeable thing about this game are the graphics and lack there of, yikes. It looks like an Xbox game, not even a 360 game and you can tell it's not an optimized game yet as my CPU fans start spinning up after 25 mins of play. The game is enjoyable and whover did the commentating did a really nice job. It sounds more natural than any of the Tiger games I can think of.

I'm not very good at golf games so a 17 over on their default course was no surprise. I found putting to be a lot easier than I thought. It was the midrange stuff that got me good but overall it's a fun game of golf but man I can't get over the pedestrian graphics even with a GTX 780. And upping the tree count just introduces stuttering and the game doesn't really look any better.

[J_Cauthen]

The most noticeable thing about this game are the graphics and lack there of, yikes. It looks like an Xbox game, not even a 360 game and you can tell it's not an optimized game yet as my CPU fans start spinning up after 25 mins of play. The game is enjoyable and whover did the commentating did a really nice job. It sounds more natural than any of the Tiger games I can think of.

I'm not very good at golf games so a 17 over on their default course was no surprise. I found putting to be a lot easier than I thought. It was the midrange stuff that got me good but overall it's a fun game of golf but man I can't get over the pedestrian graphics even with a GTX 780. And upping the tree count just introduces stuttering and the game doesn't really look any better.

It's never going to be an award winner when it comes to graphics. I'm amazed at the difference in graphics quality between The Golf Club and the yet to be released, Perfect Golf, even though both of them use the Unity engine. I'm sure The Golf Club will see incremental improvements in certain areas of the graphics, but I can't see it ever getting close to Perfect Golf in that category.

[Danimal]

So the PC version is on sale for $26.24 to Oct. 1st. If I buy that can I play in your PS4 tournaments or no?

[J_Cauthen]

So the PC version is on sale for $26.24 to Oct. 1st. If I buy that can I play in your PS4 tournaments or no?

Your score won't show up on the PS4 leaderboard because the game can't accommodate cross-platform play... heck, not even all the players playing in the DSP Mini Tour on the PS4 right now have their scores showing up on the leaderboard. I'm thinking that problem has been alleviated based on what I've seen of tournaments and Tour rounds that were created after the patch though.

HBS continue to say that they are striving for cross platform play, but I don't see it coming any time soon.

[MERACE]

It's never going to be an award winner when it comes to graphics. I'm amazed at the difference in graphics quality between The Golf Club and the yet to be released, Perfect Golf, even though both of them use the Unity engine. I'm sure The Golf Club will see incremental improvements in certain areas of the graphics, but I can't see it ever getting close to Perfect Golf in that category.

You have to remember that the screen shots and videos are from the alpha version of the game which is missing content including the "toon"( ). When all of the components are eventually included in the game it most likely will require a very high spec computer to run PG in all of its graphical glory.


-MERACE

[J_Cauthen]

You have to remember that the screen shots and videos are from the alpha version of the game which is missing content including the "toon"( ). When all of the components are eventually included in the game it most likely will require a very high spec computer to run PG in all of its graphical glory.

Valid point... I imagine these are high-spec computers that are producing the alpha version videos, sans an animated golfer. I still think that even at the same resolution and graphics detail levels, Perfect Golf is going to look less "generic" than The Golf Club. They're not designing it to be a 'paint by the numbers' course designer (relatively speaking) like the GNCD in The Golf Club. Each has their place and their market and I'm sure I'll wind up owning Perfect Golf whenever it releases next year, and I'll be on their forum complaining about the sluggish frame rate

[J_Cauthen]

As some of you have already seen, this week's XB1 patch didn't happen. It failed Microsoft's certification for two items and HBS had to resubmit. They're hoping for release on Monday or Tuesday.

The worst possible scenario is that if the patch isn't ready for distribution by Wednesday of this coming week, HBS will hold it back and bundle it with the update that is scheduled to be released the week after next, the way it's being presented now.

I know a good bit about what's going on with part of this patch in regard to the game's cameras and presentation options, but I've agreed not to disclose the details until HBS is ready to do so themselves. I can say that these changes will radically change the way I view and experience the game! It's almost going to seem like a new game to me, but I have a psychotic fetish about cameras and presentation These changes, along with what I'm hoping will be performance improvements via the patch should change a lot of attitudes about the game... mine - which is now an apathetic one - included