HB Studios Next-Gen golf game: The Golf Club

[AcemanPR]

Digitally bought the Xbox One version at lunch, I slept like a baby last night so hopefully I will be still awake to play a round at midnight tonight. Are we going to set up a DSP Society for this game?

[Aristo]

I'll be on at Midnight. The game is pre-loaded and I'm ready to put it through its paces.

[DivotMaker]

According to Shaun (Producer of TGC2) Steam will not unlock PC version until 12 PM tomorrow.

[TCrouch]

So when does the NDA lift, then? Midnight, I'm assuming?

[Danimal]

According to Shaun (Producer of TGC2) Steam will not unlock PC version until 12 PM tomorrow.

That's f***in stupid and they also don't have a pre-load or didn't as of yesterday. I still don't get the premise behind holding back PC release dates, they could of put this out a week ago but no let's time it with the console release.

[DivotMaker]

So when does the NDA lift, then? Midnight, I'm assuming?

They aren't releasing us from discussing what happened during Beta, but as soon as the game is released on all platforms, we can discuss the released game.

I am not making this s*** up either......

[DivotMaker]

According to Shaun (Producer of TGC2) Steam will not unlock PC version until 12 PM tomorrow.

That's f***in stupid and they also don't have a pre-load or didn't as of yesterday. I still don't get the premise behind holding back PC release dates, they could of put this out a week ago but no let's time it with the console release.

Cannot disagree.

I have questioned many decisions made during the development of this game. Thankfully the game outshines all of the nonsense surrounding it's release.

[J_Cauthen]

Digitally bought the Xbox One version at lunch, I slept like a baby last night so hopefully I will be still awake to play a round at midnight tonight. Are we going to set up a DSP Society for this game?

I'd be glad to set up a DSP Society on the XBox One, and also for the PS4 and PC versions as well. I have all three of them on pre-order, with the PS4 version being on DVD, but due in tomorrow. Owning all three versions, I could set up identical competitions on all three platforms, and we could discuss them here in the forum on more common terms. Tim (Divotmaker) has indicated he'd ask Shaun West if we could be granted "Official" Society status, which would be a better solution. I think HBS is going to be pretty stingy about who they grant official status to, so I'm not banking on that, especially since we'd be a private society.

I'll be unlocking the XBox One version of the game here in about 46 minutes, so I could set up a DSP society for XBox One if everyone's okay with it.

[pk500]

First impressions after an hour of play:

+ Much prettier game
+ Flop shot isn't nearly as deadly
+ Improved swing mechanic. Drives are tougher.
+ John is back! Love that dude's commentary.
+ Much better ball physics on fairway. True bounce and roll.
+ On-screen Friends alerts are cool.
+ New front-end menu is nice, with many more course selection filtering options.

- Ball impact sound effects are hollow.
- Framerate is worse than TGC 1.

I'm pleased. But the sometimes-chugging framerate on the XB1 is very disappointing. Moving the game to my external drive didn't help. Maybe the servers where the courses are stored are getting hammered.

I could overlook the occasional framerate chugs on TGC 1. But the slowdown in TGC 2 so far is even more noticeable than on TGC 1. I didn't expect regression in this area. I hope a patch is coming soon if this doesn't improve.

[Teal]

Yeah, played about 10 holes tonight myself. Like seeing friends GT's on the course, and Terry's ball bounce onto the green as he caught up with me. I never played the first one, but the stuttering was noticeable. Didn't hamper gameplay, but the fly overs are quite stuttery, with pretty glaring pop in. Hope they can patch things as they go. Overall, though, I'm gonna like this one. Nice change from the EA offerings.

[Diablo25]

As far as chugging frame rate, turn depth of field off. That should help. Love the customization tools...especially for clubs. Turn follow cam OFF and just use the D Pad to manually follow ball once hit. I put a lot of The on screen stuff as fade. More to come. LOVE THE GAME.

[J_Cauthen]

As far as chugging frame rate, turn depth of field off. That should help. Love the customization tools...especially for clubs. Turn follow cam OFF and just use the D Pad to manually follow ball once hit. I put a lot of The on screen stuff as fade. More to come. LOVE THE GAME.

First thing I did was go in and turn off DOF, Bloom, and Motion Blur. I enabled FXAA, however. I played Crosstown GC, and while I got some occasional judder during the flyover, I didn't see much judder in game.

During the swing, the frame rate was fast enough for me to feel like I had control of it. Paul, Diablo is right, turn the follow cam off in the cam off and then switch to a reverse angle camera after watching the ball's flight from you golfer's perspective for a while. What I do is use the right D-pad press about 75% of the flight into a shot of greater than 50 yards to the green, and a left D-pad press at 75% in on a shot of less than 50 yards.

PK, was it feeling framey to you during the swing? If so that would be brutal in this game, trying to get your tempo. If you continue to have problems after what Diablo and I have recommended, try turn the FXAA off. I'm about to try that with mine to see if I can tell a difference.

[dbdynsty25]

Hey...they fixed the ball rolling through every damn green. A plus in my book. Not really noticing any framerate issues on my XB1 version.

But then again, I made it through about 9 holes and then I got disconnected from the round. F minus

[DChaps]

........But then again, I made it through about 9 holes and then I got disconnected from the round. F minus

This! In about an hour of play, I was disconnected 6 times. This was the main thing that kept me from playing TGC1 more than I did, the constant disconnects. What is the cause of this? I never found a solution in TGC1. I got disconnected tonight even when I was browsing courses or editing my profile.

How do you change the screen size and brightness? My stat cards/menus are cut off on the corners of the screen and it is very dark on my plasma TV. I need to shrink it down so I can see everything but I can't figure out how to do it. I went through all the settings and could not find anything under graphics, HUD, gameplay, etc.

[vader29]

Created a quick Society on Xbox One named DSP (Digital Sportspage) and set to private to see what the creation process was like, was very simple, we could use it or another one if John or someone else wants to create one. Ugh off to work now.

[Wilk5280]

Played a round on the PS4 Pro with Tour clubs. Shot minus 1 with default everything and didn't notice much in the way of framerate hiccups or network issues. This was was 4:15 am local time here in CO so maybe that's attributed to the lack of disconnect. My initial impressions are that the game looks and plays significantly better than the first.

[AcemanPR]

I jumped right into Tour mode, and after 11 holes, I'm shooting a little more than bogey golf.

This game plays a much more realistic game of golf! Love the physics and you do have to concentrate on every shot! Definitely looks much better than TGC1. Not too much to criticize about the game yet, hopefully can get my HCP established the next couple days.

[pk500]

Thanks for the tips, fellas. I'll give them a go.

Still frustrating. I have played PC games, where adjustment of settings to compensate for hardware, a sh*tty graphics engine or shoddy programming is the norm. But I thought consoles were a more egalitarian, plug-and-play platform.

This is the first time I've been told to turn off settings in an Xbox One game. Reminds me of the days I gamed on an IBM ThinkPad laptop, except this time I'm gaming on a stock XB1.

[pk500]

How do you change the screen size and brightness? My stat cards/menus are cut off on the corners of the screen and it is very dark on my plasma TV. I need to shrink it down so I can see everything but I can't figure out how to do it. I went through all the settings and could not find anything under graphics, HUD, gameplay, etc.

I have the screen size problems with a lot of games these days, Don. Probably because I'm still rocking a 2008 720p Panasonic plasma.

I would venture to guess that all games now are programmed for 1080p or 2160p screens or higher.

[J_Cauthen]

Created a quick Society on Xbox One named DSP (Digital Sportspage) and set to private to see what the creation process was like, was very simple, we could use it or another one if John or someone else wants to create one. Ugh off to work now.

Cool, I'll check it out... what's the password?

[Danimal]

John go ahead and make the PC Society if you don't mind.

I won't get to this until tonight because of their unlock policy.

[J_Cauthen]

I played an 18 hole round at The Goldfinch GC, with Tour clubs, last thing this morning before I konked out. I shot a 79 and felt happy to shoot that! It's a great looking course and a good challenge, IMO. I'm having more trouble getting my timing right in the XB1 version than I was the PC, during the beta. I'd gotten acclimated to the XBox 360 controller and 60 to 70 FPS with the PC, whereas I'm using the XBox One controller and having to adapt to what I'd guess is 28 to 35 FPS on the XBox One. I got a little better as the night wore on though, but my dominant tempo seems to be slow/perfect, followed closely by slow/fast.

My round at The Goldfinch GC was a solo round, and twice during the round I had to get up and leave the game idle for about two to three minutes. I was broadcasting via Mixer during the round (which didn't seem to slow the game down at all!), but each time I let it sit idle for that long, the game lost its connection to the server and I had to manually hit "Go Online" in the main menu to reconnect with HBS' server.

HBS is actively working on the network errors and course importing problems and if history repeats itself, they'll be able to fix it via a server side patch.

[J_Cauthen]

John go ahead and make the PC Society if you don't mind.

I won't get to this until tonight because of their unlock policy.

I'd be glad to... I'm off until Friday night so I've got plenty of time this week to take care of bidness. I'll make a post early this afternoon with details about it.

[Diablo25]

Created a quick Society on Xbox One named DSP (Digital Sportspage) and set to private to see what the creation process was like, was very simple, we could use it or another one if John or someone else wants to create one. Ugh off to work now.

Cool, I'll check it out... what's the password?

Ditto.

[RobVarak]

Liking what I'm seeing so far. I scarcely missed a fairway in my first round, but my putting was such dogshit that I ended up ten over for the round lol I hadn't played a round of TGC in many, many months though, so I'm rusty as hell.

Not having too much trouble with frame rate, but was getting d/c from the servers with some frequency.