PGA Tour 2K21

Genre: Sports (Golf)

Players: 1-4 (Local Alternating, Online)

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Review:

PGA Tour 2K21 is the first of what seems likely to be a yearly Golf franchise from 2K Sports. This also marks the first time in a half a decade that the PGA Tour license has been tied to a major-release videogame after the end of EA Sports’ long-running Tiger Woods PGA Tour series and their lukewarm Rory McIlroy PGA Tour. After the genre as a whole pretty much died out following this, PGA Tour seeks to rekindle the genre, with PGA Tour 2K21 coming to multiple platforms including the Nintendo Switch in 2020.

Graphically, PGA Tour 2K21 is rough on the Nintendo Switch, and I’m not talking about the grassy part of the courses. This game suffers from all sorts of graphical ugliness that’s pretty atrocious for a $60 game. Extremely bad aliasing, simple and ugly-looking trees, framerate drops (especially in menus), some odd visual noise in the water. I’m not gonna’ sugarcoat it – PGA Tour 2K21 is a terrible-looking game on Nintendo Switch.

Perhaps it can be seen as a saving grace then that the sound is quite good. The environmental noises are nice, the sounds of the club making contact with the ball and the ball hitting the green are good, and the voiced commentary is nice as well. The game’s music, where it appears, is decent if unmemorable.

While I am terribly disappointed in the visuals of PGA Tour 2K21 on the Nintendo Switch, I am quite pleased with the gameplay. Players are required to use an analog stick to simulate the swing of their club, and both timing and precision in its movement are vital to making a good shot. This system is conveyed to players in an excellent tutorial at the beginning of the game, and it’s a system that’s possibly the best translation of golf into a videogame that I’ve seen outside of something that uses motion controls. Oh, yeah, about that – don’t go looking for any of the unique features of the Nintendo Switch to make it into this game, because you won’t find anything here.

The great controls and solid tutorial here are backed up by a fully fleshed-out campaign mode, a lot of options for character creation, and even a full course builder where you can edit a plot of land and all 18 holes located on it. What’s more, the game has full support for both local and online multiplayer. Suffice it to say, when it comes to gameplay and features, PGA Tour 2K21 is the real deal, and at the time of this writing I would say that it is (unfortunately by default) the absolute best Golf simulation game on the Nintendo Switch (though both Golf Story and What the Golf? provide excellent golf experiences in very different ways from what this game offers).

There is one other thing I need to mention here, and it’s frustrating that there’s a major flaw in this release beyond the terrible graphics. PGA Tour 2K21 is a horribly buggy game, to the point of frustration. I have had the entire course and my golfer swallowed up into a black void. I have had the game crash on me. At multiple points when I first started the game I found myself wondering if it had frozen on me before it proceeded. This is simply unacceptable, especially in a game from a major publisher and especially especially in a game that’s selling for $60.

Glitches and terrible graphics aside, PGA Tour 2K21 is still a phenomenal game of golf, and as long as you can forgive its severe flaws, it is one that is a must-have for fans of the genre looking to enjoy their sport on the Nintendo Switch. It may be ugly as sin and seemingly held together by duck tape and gum, but the gameplay is good enough to make it worthwhile… though you may want to wait until you can get it on sale.

tl;dr – PGA Tour 2K21 looks to reinvigorate the simulation style of Golf game, and on balance I’d say it does a good job of that, although not without some extremely rough edges. The graphics on the Nintendo Switch are atrocious, and the game is horribly buggy, but if you can forgive these major flaws, you’ll find this to otherwise be a phenomenal golf game with great gameplay and plenty of options.

Grade: B-

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2020 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Best Sports Game

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