14 DAY TRIAL // 
There was a time when the only way to play simulated golf on consoles was to launch one of the yearly releases of Tiger Woods PGA Tour, the title created by EA Sports, and try to walk on the footsteps of the legendary player.
The golfer has been in some trouble lately, and that means there was a gap in 2014 when it comes to EA Sports-made titles, an opening through which HB Studios is trying to push its new The Golf Club as a solid alternative, a game which is focused more on the actual game than on presentation and which lovers of the sports will be able to play for hundreds of hours.
There are moments when the title feels a little barren, especially for those who love to get some story into their sports-based experience, but it also offers a great model for the physics of golf and includes a top-notch editor which gamers can use to design their own courses.
The Golf Club does not include any variety in the player characteristics and the game offers limited customization for the man wielding the various clubs, with no story to speak of, although there’s a way for larger groups of players to develop their own narratives when they join a larger tour together.
Because HB Studios cannot compete with EA Sports when it comes to licensing, the courses featured in the title on launch do not include recreations for any real world famous attractions and there’s no big event built around Augusta.
The development team has focused less on the presentation and more on the actual mechanics of golf and has designed a set of swing-focused mechanics delivering an experience that is accessible but also has plenty of depth.
The Golf Club drops the player right in the middle of the action, without offering the option to try out a few practice levels first and with no clear explanation of the way the experience simulates the sport, and there are gamers who might find the directness unwelcomed.
There are no loading screens between the holes and the game offers a very pure take on the sport, with time and plenty of failures required in order to learn exactly how to hit with every golf, how to account for the wind and how to treat the various types of terrain.
The development team has been careful when it comes to the quality of the simulation, and the variety of courses offered is truly impressive.
The title also has a lot of statistical data to share with the players, showing them a clear path towards improvement, but the constant initial failures can be a pretty big turnoff for some gamers.
This is a game with a lot of variety that’s built upon trial and error, and the core mechanics, while Spartan, are well designed to show what the sport of golf is all about and how hard it is to become truly proficient at playing, especially without the classic assistance that video games tend to lavish on the player.
The Golf Club is offered on the PC and the PlayStation 4 from Sony, in addition to the Xbox One from Microsoft, but the graphics are not very consistent and sometimes it looks like something that could be delivered just as well on last-gen devices.
There are some issues with screen tearing, and despite the fact that most golf courses are made up of mostly the same elements, the development team has not managed to offer high quality textures for the trees or the lone human that guides the action.
The Golf Club has limited presentation options, no crowds, limited customization, so it could focus most of its resources on the look of the foliage or the grass, but that seems to not have happened and the look of the game is decidedly last-gen.
The sound design of The Golf Club is also limited, although I came to appreciate the commentary offered during the playthrough mainly because it took my mind away a little from my previous failures.
When it comes to multiplayer, the title from HB Studios does offer plenty of options and the entire system works very well, allowing gamers to interact with friends or strangers regardless of whether they are online or not.
Shadow play can be enabled, showing how a particular player has performed on one of the courses, with clear lines showing how he handled his shots, and it’s easy to use the mechanic to set up long-term rivalries and competitions to try to get as low under par as possible.
In one way, actually playing The Golf Club is just one half of the experience, and those who are looking for the full one should really fire up the editor and try to build a course of their own.
The process can be very simple: choose some general values for characteristics and simply tell the game to generate a result and then go in and put some finishing touches by hand before uploading the result in order to see how the rest of the community will evaluate it.
As with the core game, there’s little in the way of information offered to players who plan to design their own awesome course, with varied holes and a progression for the difficulty level, but it’s easy to test various choices and see what the resulting area looks like.
There’s a slight lag associated with course editing, probably because of all the work The Golf Club needs to do in order to create something from scratch, but players have already created some impressive levels, some clearly based on fantasy golf and others linked to real world locations.
The Golf Club is an ambitious game, but clearly the resources available to the development team were limited and some elements of the experience were prioritized ahead of others, resulting in an uneven experience.
The actual simulation of the swing and the physics of the game are solid, and the sense of constant learning and improvement is also welcomed, but the presentation needs a lot more work and the graphics should also be brushed up if possible.
The Golf Club can be a good investment for purists and the editor is a great piece of work, but this is also a game that lacks attention to details at times and suffers because of that.
