
It's never a good sign when a game has pop-in on the title screen and so it proves: foliage will often appear from nowhere, and there's a sporadic shimmering effect in certain areas. The courses, rendered in the Frostbite engine, look good for the most part, but there are obvious performance issues throughout. This might be less of a problem if what remained was a noticeable improvement on previous entries. Even the Country Clubs from Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14 have been removed.
#Ea sports rory mcilroy pga tour ps4 series
No Skins! EA Tiburon has promised several free updates to the game that will add new courses and features, though I'm not sure that compensates for the absence of options that have been an integral part of the series for years. There's no Best Ball, no Alternate Shot, no Four Ball, no Skins. In multiplayer - online or off - you can only select between Stroke Play and Match Play. There are no practice rounds in Career mode, no optional objectives to complete for XP boosts. It's far from the only thing that's missing. In an age of "Xbox, record that" and Share buttons, perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise that you can't watch or save replays of your best shots within the game, but it's disappointing not to have the option.

The Highlights tab, meanwhile, simply collects reports of completed rounds and sponsorship deals. Your stats will steadily rise, and occasionally you'll unlock some more branded gear, but otherwise there's little sense of progress - not least because there's no tangible record of your recent achievements, just a series of rudimentary stat tables.

There's no sense of pageantry surrounding the big competitions, and very little fanfare when you win a tournament: you get a dry text report with a trite quote or two from your golfer. I qualified for the PGA Tour after placing second in my first round as an amateur, and then joylessly worked my way through a series of disconnected tournaments. In fact, the career mode as a whole is significantly undernourished. Loading screens offer some useful tips, including this gem: 'Before taking a swing, you should always aim your shot.' Gone are the detailed character customisation options for your career golfer, replaced instead by a handful of preset avatars, most of which look like they've been designed by someone who's never seen a human face, but once had one described to them over a Skype call from a noisy venue with particularly flaky wi-fi. There are 12 courses, when two years ago we had 20 (heck, it's two fewer than Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005 managed). Tiger's last outing had five women from the LPGA Tour they've been unceremoniously dropped here, as has roughly half the roster of male golfers. Because EA Sports Rory McIlroy PGA Tour Turbo HD Remix has fewer courses, golfers, modes and features than its predecessor.

It turns out that "taking your game to levels once only dreamed of" involves little more than pitch-and-putt on a course surrounded by reused Battlefield assets and a mode that might as well be called Rory McIlroy's Mario Golf.Īnd, it transpires, "limitless" isn't so much an exaggeration as a bald-faced lie. An infinite number of procedurally-generated courses? The ability to play anti-gravity space golf against a sentient blancmange using giraffes as clubs? Apparently not. "The ability to break free, to experience golf in ways you never thought possible." What could this mean? My mind raced. "Limitless!" chirrups Rich Lerner, like a man triumphantly declaring his favourite Bradley Cooper film. You could forgive yourself for getting a little excited after the hyperbolic introduction. Surely, then, this is the ideal opportunity for a fresh start, and a series seemingly content to coast along on past successes would be revitalised by its prodigiously talented star? With Tiger Woods experiencing the kind of career downturn that would have Messrs Torres and Falcao nodding sympathetically, it's no wonder EA has opted to drop the fairway-dodging flop for its flagship golf series, replacing him with the more successful (and marketable) Rory McIlroy. Not so much streamlined as stripped bare, Rory McIlroy PGA Tour is a half-decent game - in the sense that it is a decent game cut in half.
