EA Games may be spending this year in the clubhouse while it finds another big name to brand its next PGA Tour title with, but that’s not stopping Canadian company HB Studios from having a crack at the tricky genre. The developer quietly announced The Golf Club for the PlayStation 4 this week, and it sounds like a solid alternative if you know your woods from your wedges.
Unlike the abovementioned giant’s series, the title will boast a complete Course Creator that will allow you to build the next best thing to The Belfry with a DualShock 4. You’ll be able to make your construction as simple or complex as you like, with sliders allowing you to alter foliage density, hazards, and more. In other words, you won’t need a degree in landscape architecture to get started.
Much like other do-it-yourself releases such as LittleBigPlanet, the game will be heavily social to boot. For example, you’ll be able to upload and share any of your creations with other players, and all of your shots will be stored in the cloud, meaning that you’ll have the option to “compete” against friends and strangers who may not even be online at the same time.
There’s a demonstration of the title’s Course Creator and gameplay embedded below. The studio’s aiming for a Spring 2014 release, though we can’t help but feel that it’s got a lot of work left to do if it wants to hit that window. Don’t get us wrong, the title’s showing plenty of promise – but there are some nasty frame-rate and pop-in issues noticeable in this footage. Hopefully the outfit can clear them up, however, as this may prove your only chance to hit the links on your PS4 for a while.
[source youtube.com, via youtube.com, polygon.com]
Comments 9
Any idea if this will be Move compatible? We know it works with the PS4, but future plans have been kept very quiet.
Besides the dumb title, looks pretty neat.
Drive Club , Golf Club ...hum
Anyways,it should be called Hot Shots Golf-All grown up . No infidelity Edition.
As an avid golfer I'm excited to finally see a golf title on the supercharged console. The lighting and landscape detail look great. Although I must say that one thing really bothers me. The players' swings look so robotic! Totally unnatural. No one swings like that
I love a good golf game. Playing PGA 13 or 12 not too sure... anyway, playing it on the most difficult pro mode is insanely difficult to master. Totally frustrating but addictive. It makes you loathe the rain. I'd play a demo before buying this, I'm pretty happy with what EA has been producing recently but I'm willing to try something else. Also, I miss 'Tiger POWERSHOT!'
@RawShark No word on that just yet. I'd be surprised if it didn't, to be honest.
Looks nice and who doesn't want to download some insane courses thought up by the community at large.
looks good I wonder if it has Move support
This game will be brilliant if they can get the ball to fly smooth through the air without jerky frames or pop-in foliage. PS4 has lots of very fast RAM and a powerful GPU with lots of compute units, so its not an impossible task. XB1 will struggle. They also need to work on the golfer animations. The golfer looks great and has a brilliant swing but the follow through just freezes like a statue. Easily fixed with a muscle relax animation. When looking from above, the trees do tend to look the same colour so they need to add a little variety of shape and colour. The trees look perfect when actually on the course. The interface also needs a bit of polish but it's definitely going in the right direction with the choice of images. Some onscreen text is hard to read because the background is too busy behind it, so they need to consider solid floating tabs coming in form either side or more opaque tints under the text.
Making your own courses is a brilliant idea, adding endless play time to the game. They have implemented it superbly so beginners can have a random course generated in 3 seconds with just 3 button clicks. It's true. Watch it in the video. The generated courses are not flawed or unplayable but you can edit them if you dislike something. Those with more creativity can go in and really edit and sculpt every part, or even create a new one completely from scratch making everything by hand. There is a whole games worth of gameplay just in creating the courses if you enjoy being creative, and that's without actually playing them, or playing other people's creations. Definitely work in progress but really exciting stuff. Spring 1014 is too early. I'll expect this in summer all polished up on PS4. They have a winner in their grasp.
I'll buy the next Hot Shots Golf for my fantasy fun light hearted stuff, and this one as my hardcore creative golf sim. Perfect partnership.
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