Claude Dallas
Member
The on course UI is absolutely perfect. Nice refinement from 1 and way less obnoxious than EA attempts.
I'm not sure I've ever cared about what a menu looks like so I can't judge there.
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
The Golf Club 2 |OT| High Society
- Thread starter -NeoTB1-
- Start date
The on course UI is absolutely perfect. Nice refinement from 1 and way less obnoxious than EA attempts.
I'm not sure I've ever cared about what a menu looks like so I can't judge there.
Dlacy13g
Member
Really liking some of the changes so far. The new tutorial is really welcome especially for those new to the game. Even if you played last years, the new tutorial does a good job of explaining how some of the mechanics work together like more power on a drive based on a more fluid back to front swing vs just pulling back and holding then releasing forward. Customization of the character is welcome but not "OMG WOW" factor. Server issues have been really the biggest gripe so far but as that gets ironed out this game will become a staple for me.
MarineMountie
Member
SO I see nobody has created a GAF society yet. I will create one if people are interested on PS4. Just need some name ideas for the club.
JetBlackPanda
Member
oh man. something with GAF gold? lol
Gaming Age Forum Gold Society
The Gaf Club too
Weapons of Gaf Destruction
Shooter MCGaf'n
lol anyone else have any ideas.
I know mine are shit.
JetBlackPanda
Member
Yeah, I was wanting to make one, but when I finally got access to the servers my desire to search and play a few courses outweighed forming a society.
Glory and Fortune GC?
Glory and Fortune Country Club
lol that's pretty good, its the wow and I believe FFIX GAF guild name
Yep, it's also the Elder Scrolls Online guild name (at least on PS4).
Yeah, I was wanting to make one, but when I finally got access to the servers my desire to search and play a few courses outweighed forming a society.
Glory and Fortune GC?
I like it.
Genuinely Abnormal Folk would probably be a better descriptor of our prospective members than Glory and Fortune though, lol. Or in my case 'Generally Avoiding Fairways'.
But Glory and Fortune CC is good.
MarineMountie
Member
I'll set up the PS4 Club now. We will just go with Glory And Fortune CC. Make it simulation, a small buy in to deter a few randoms since I'm going to make it open to join.
EDIT: I'll make it when the servers want to cooperate and allow me to spend some currency.
EDIT: I'll make it when the servers want to cooperate and allow me to spend some currency.
JetBlackPanda
Member
Claude Dallas
Member
Uh, Victory Village needs to pay its water bill
MarineMountie
Member
I made the club. Forgive the emblem, Its not allowing me to access my currency so I can't buy any pictures for it. Had to use some default ones for now. I'll give some time for people to join and then I'll set up an event.
Just search for Glory and Fortune CC. Its just 10 currency to join and its open.
Just search for Glory and Fortune CC. Its just 10 currency to join and its open.
MarineMountie
Member
Yes. Which is great because you can have so many tournaments to play.
I think the devs said five, but only one can be your primary.
In too, as soon as possible 😃
MarineMountie
Member
I keep checking to see if the servers are better. Its frustrating but I'm trying to stay patient.
GhostWriter24
Member
Guys, is this game really buggy? I almost pulled the trigger on Amazon, then I saw the 1.5 star average review score... Thoughts?
MarineMountie
Member
The fuck? I don't know who is giving those reviews, but give the real reviews a look. It is reviewing well and is the best golf simulation on the market.
The only real problem right now is the servers. Makes the menus laggy, can't do society stuff, can't access your currency...Frustrating but it will be fixed.
Do it!
nicoga3000
Saint Nic
Yup. And HB has acknowledged the server issues. The core game is fully available for offline play.
Can´t stand the gameplay, i wish this game had the 3 buttons type of swing.
gingerbeardman
Member
Exactly this. The user interface, menus and osd in the first game were bad and this isn't much better at all.
Compare with Rory PGA.
TGC2
Which is most legible? Which can be read most easily? Which can give you the information at a glance? Which would you rather look at on a TV from 10ft away?
As a software designer and developer, seeing TGC2 makes me cringe. It's like seeing an app that doesn't take into account use experience. Or a website that isn't responsive/mobile friendly.
There's no excuse to make the user interface that crappy. If the really didn't know how to improve it, all they had to do is take inspiration from the opposition!
And Rory PGA isn't even the best example!
Here's two more
Rory PGA
TGC2
nicoga3000
Saint Nic
If I'm going to be completely honest, graphics are nicer in Rory, but the info for your shot is all there (minus having to hold R2 on PS4 to see the slope of your current lie). OK and the fact that your current shot doesn't say "for par" or "for birdie".
But seriously, I don't get what the issue is. Please feel free to explain your stance because as someone who has played an extensive amount of golf games, I see no glaring issues with TGC2.
Claude Dallas
Member
Exactly this. The user interface, menus and osd in the first game were bad and this isn't much better at all.
Compare with Rory PGA.
TGC2
Which is most legible? Which can be read most easily? Which can give you the information at a glance? Which would you rather look at on a TV from 10ft away?
As a software designer and developer, seeing TGC2 makes me cringe. It's like seeing an app that doesn't take into account use experience. Or a website that isn't responsive/mobile friendly.
There's no excuse to make the user interface that crappy. If the really didn't know how to improve it, all they had to do is take inspiration from the opposition!
And Rory PGA isn't even the best example!
Here's two more
Rory PGA
TGC2
Uh to me this hurts your argument. The less garbage on screen the better.
So I just started and I'm in menu hell... been trying to even select a golf course for 10 minutes and can't. Help 
So disappointed right now. Hopefully they get on top of this.
Aren't there any courses actually in the game data itself? Why is the search not showing any courses at all?
So disappointed right now. Hopefully they get on top of this.
Aren't there any courses actually in the game data itself? Why is the search not showing any courses at all?
Yeah, I agree that interface TGC2 is fine. Player animation and some of the environment graphics might be better in EA, but the hand holding interface ruins it. The screen shot from the green basically eliminates it all together with the line marker.
You can go offline and play the official courses without connecting to the servers.So I just started and I'm in menu hell... been trying to even select a golf course for 10 minutes and can't. Help
So disappointed right now. Hopefully they get on top of this.
Aren't there any courses actually in the game data itself? Why is the search not showing any courses at all?
Claude Dallas
Member
Rory is a really good arcade golf game. And it has the perfect UI for an arcade golf game.
That's so strange that those offline courses aren't showing up when you're online, though. Something strange going on there.
AirPowerFTW
Member
Wow, the sever issues are craptatstic right now. Just fired the game up this morning and have spent more time waiting for menu loads than using them!
Otherwise it feels a lot like a refine TGC1 (no surprise).
Little disappointed the PS4 Pro version still has so much foliage and shadow pop-in on the pre-tee fly-bys. I know Unity isn't brilliant for optimisation on PS4 but it really seems like they didn't bother. Honestly just upping the LOD settings would probably make a massive difference to pop-in without performance hits (IMHO).
Turning off FXAA makes the course look better (less blurry) but at the expense of noticeable aliasing on the player model. I haven't decided about DoF, Bloom or Motion Blur yet, but turning them off seems to look and feel better so far. The bloom effects with clouds passing over feels pretty unnatural, with the whole image seemingly changing colour palettes - looks wrong.
Game plays well though, great simulation that's for sure!
Otherwise it feels a lot like a refine TGC1 (no surprise).
Little disappointed the PS4 Pro version still has so much foliage and shadow pop-in on the pre-tee fly-bys. I know Unity isn't brilliant for optimisation on PS4 but it really seems like they didn't bother. Honestly just upping the LOD settings would probably make a massive difference to pop-in without performance hits (IMHO).
Turning off FXAA makes the course look better (less blurry) but at the expense of noticeable aliasing on the player model. I haven't decided about DoF, Bloom or Motion Blur yet, but turning them off seems to look and feel better so far. The bloom effects with clouds passing over feels pretty unnatural, with the whole image seemingly changing colour palettes - looks wrong.
Game plays well though, great simulation that's for sure!
nicoga3000
Saint Nic
There absolutely are. Servers are still wonky, though.
Put 3 rounds in. Feeling very mixed so far.
Game opens well with a series of good tutorials and a vastly improved UI design for the menus. The main menu design was a huge issue I had with the first game so it's good to see that improved.
Unfortunately, from there things go downhill in a hurry. Put simply, the game is broken at launch. Everything in the menus requires their servers, including the simple act of choosing a golf course to play, and their servers don't work. Not only that, but the game doesn't recognise this and kick you into offline mode (and there's no offline mode option) so I struggled in hanging menus for 20 minutes before turning off the Wifi in the PS4 options. That at least allowed me to play a game, but course search, multiplayer, leaderboards, career modes... all non-functional, all evening. Even the fucking personal statistics screen won't allow you to look at it if you're offline. Yes, you can't even check your own single player scores if HB's servers are down. That's nonsense, and it's probably why the servers are struggling in the first place - like Driveclub before them, HB have pushed way too much stuff to the servers when they should have let a lot of it (like stat tracking) be local data.
But okay, I finally got into a single player game. How is it?
The good news is that the gameplay changes are excellent. Almost all complaints for the first one have been dealt with. The three 'difficulties' of clubs are great, with Player being the sweet spot for me. The new feedback on your swing is good. The driving range is reasonably well implemented to get used to the new clubs, too.
What's more, the chipping game is hugely improved. Flop shots are no longer broken and are real risk/reward shots like they should be, 'chip' shots are no longer mere bump and runs, pitch shots bite like they should. All of this is good. Putting is much the same, but that's a good thing - putting here is excellent. The basic golf action is good, and better than the first game - mostly.
Unfortunately one really horrible flaw has worked it's way into the game - the ball physics are way off on drives and long woods, imo. It's a 'bouncy ball' issue and I immediately went to their forums when I noticed it and people are talking about it there too. To me, the ball appears to bounce a standard amount of times no matter what surface it hits, with the exception of sand.
This is bizarre, and wrong. If you stripe it down the fairway, the ball will bounce about 5 times. Fair enough. But it seems to have the same series of bounces at the same heights every time - which doesn't seem right to me at all. But far worse is that if you hit it in the light rough or even the deep rough you'll see the exact same bounces at the exact same heights - as if the ball isn't reacting to the longer grass at all. Yes, the rough impacts the ball's rate of deceleration, but that's not enough. It should also impact the bounce of the ball and 'grab' it. It just doesn't feel right at all and feels like a step back from the first game. I hope they patch this.
Then we come to the other huge problem the first game had - performance. I'm on PS4 Pro and a better standard of performance was the number 1 thing I was looking forward to here. Unbelievably, I think it might currently be performing worse than the first game. It needs patching, desperately. I had one drive utterly ruined by a massive frame skip at the top of my swing, and other shots were affected too. The level of depth pop-in is still present, and when drives are in the air and the game is rendering a lot of foliage the frame rate still tanks and you even (rarely) still get screen tearing. "It's unity" isn't a good enough excuse.
As for the commentary much of it is the same, but the newer stuff is good. All of my least favourite lines are still there though.
Seeing the same technical issues allied to the same commentary and many of the same courses with no discernible graphical improvement in the engine honestly makes the game feel like a gameplay patch for the first one rather than an entirely new game. Perhaps if the society features were working I'd feel differently.
Right now I hate to say it but I'd have to tell people looking at this game to hold off until the first patch is out. The bones of a good game are there but right now it's broken.
The funny thing is that the first game works off the same servers so that game is broken now too. I couldn't recommend the first game instead if I wanted to.
Game opens well with a series of good tutorials and a vastly improved UI design for the menus. The main menu design was a huge issue I had with the first game so it's good to see that improved.
Unfortunately, from there things go downhill in a hurry. Put simply, the game is broken at launch. Everything in the menus requires their servers, including the simple act of choosing a golf course to play, and their servers don't work. Not only that, but the game doesn't recognise this and kick you into offline mode (and there's no offline mode option) so I struggled in hanging menus for 20 minutes before turning off the Wifi in the PS4 options. That at least allowed me to play a game, but course search, multiplayer, leaderboards, career modes... all non-functional, all evening. Even the fucking personal statistics screen won't allow you to look at it if you're offline. Yes, you can't even check your own single player scores if HB's servers are down. That's nonsense, and it's probably why the servers are struggling in the first place - like Driveclub before them, HB have pushed way too much stuff to the servers when they should have let a lot of it (like stat tracking) be local data.
But okay, I finally got into a single player game. How is it?
The good news is that the gameplay changes are excellent. Almost all complaints for the first one have been dealt with. The three 'difficulties' of clubs are great, with Player being the sweet spot for me. The new feedback on your swing is good. The driving range is reasonably well implemented to get used to the new clubs, too.
What's more, the chipping game is hugely improved. Flop shots are no longer broken and are real risk/reward shots like they should be, 'chip' shots are no longer mere bump and runs, pitch shots bite like they should. All of this is good. Putting is much the same, but that's a good thing - putting here is excellent. The basic golf action is good, and better than the first game - mostly.
Unfortunately one really horrible flaw has worked it's way into the game - the ball physics are way off on drives and long woods, imo. It's a 'bouncy ball' issue and I immediately went to their forums when I noticed it and people are talking about it there too. To me, the ball appears to bounce a standard amount of times no matter what surface it hits, with the exception of sand.
This is bizarre, and wrong. If you stripe it down the fairway, the ball will bounce about 5 times. Fair enough. But it seems to have the same series of bounces at the same heights every time - which doesn't seem right to me at all. But far worse is that if you hit it in the light rough or even the deep rough you'll see the exact same bounces at the exact same heights - as if the ball isn't reacting to the longer grass at all. Yes, the rough impacts the ball's rate of deceleration, but that's not enough. It should also impact the bounce of the ball and 'grab' it. It just doesn't feel right at all and feels like a step back from the first game. I hope they patch this.
Then we come to the other huge problem the first game had - performance. I'm on PS4 Pro and a better standard of performance was the number 1 thing I was looking forward to here. Unbelievably, I think it might currently be performing worse than the first game. It needs patching, desperately. I had one drive utterly ruined by a massive frame skip at the top of my swing, and other shots were affected too. The level of depth pop-in is still present, and when drives are in the air and the game is rendering a lot of foliage the frame rate still tanks and you even (rarely) still get screen tearing. "It's unity" isn't a good enough excuse.
As for the commentary much of it is the same, but the newer stuff is good. All of my least favourite lines are still there though.
Seeing the same technical issues allied to the same commentary and many of the same courses with no discernible graphical improvement in the engine honestly makes the game feel like a gameplay patch for the first one rather than an entirely new game. Perhaps if the society features were working I'd feel differently.
Right now I hate to say it but I'd have to tell people looking at this game to hold off until the first patch is out. The bones of a good game are there but right now it's broken.
The funny thing is that the first game works off the same servers so that game is broken now too. I couldn't recommend the first game instead if I wanted to.
nicoga3000
Saint Nic
Yes, the server issues are a big deal. That will be fixed soon, but until then, you are correct in that too much is held server side vs local. But the single player "Play a round of golf" is there and totally working at the current moment. So you CAN play a round of golf despite the server hiccups.
Agreed.
There is a small thread on the official forums about this. It's not as bad as I think you're making it out to be. The dev even stepped in and said to turn off ball trails and look at it from various angles to see that it's not as bad as it looks from one angle. The ball motion post shot feels significantly more real than it did in TGC1.
Silly question, but were the grounds firm and dry? Because that will play a massive role in this. Play a round when the grounds are wet and see if it's still as big as you say. I've had a NUMBER of shots just "plop" into the sand. I have had a few bounce once, but the shots were low trajectory.
I wouldn't complain if they investigated this, but it's not game breaking in any sense of the word (especially when you consider how "heavy" the ball feels is most arcade golf games).
As a PC player, I can't really comment on this. The original game was not fantastic on PS4 in terms of performance, but I assumed the Pro would fix this. Seeing as console gamers are still having some minor issues, I would imagine HB will have to patch this. The "It's Unity" argument SHOULDN'T be a good enough excuse, but it sounds like Unity is a fucking bitch on consoles. My understanding is that it's quite difficult to really optimize (from the Game Dev thread at least). Hopefully they can fix it because lag and stutter can really fuck the gameplay experience up.
I would still say that if someone wants a golf game, you can't go wrong with TGC2. What other options do you have? The mess that was Rory? Arcade golfers like Mario Golf and HSG/EG? Got access to a Golden Tee Live nearby? I mean really, that's about it right now. TGC2 actually convinced me NOT to buy a Golden Tee Home Edition, haha.
Joined the Xbox Society. Played the first round and after a rough stretch on the front nine, I played better in the back to finish even. Playing with Tour clubs, you can really spray your driver if you aren't careful on your swing plane. It's probably a good thing, as driving accuracy in the first game really only came down to the course design.
MarineMountie
Member
The servers on PS4 seem to be stable this morning, so I started a tournament. It will last through July 3rd. 4 days to get 4 rounds in. Shouldn't be a problem. Its a 100 buy in. Hopefully a lot of people join in and we can start growing our Clubhouse.
pots555
Member
Thanks for the club! I joined this morning.
MarineMountie
Member
Awesome. So after my first round using "Player" difficulty for the extra distance, I couldn't hit a fairway. I even watched my analog go straight up and down and in the game it was going to the right. Going back to standard for the 2nd round lol. Awful 1st round.
Excellent. Just purchased the game (physical). Will join this evening (8 pm cest).