PGA Tour 2K25 review – breaking par

2K Games’ latest sports sim may not be the prettiest or most realistic but it does play an enjoyable round of golf. For a brief moment, officially licensed PGA Tour Golf games started to resemble buses, with two coming along at once: PGA Tour 2K23 and the far superior EA Sports PGA Tour. Publisher’s brief fascination with the concept did not last though (which in turn implies they didn’t sell that well) and it’s taken Take-Two almost three years to return with a new game.

Barring their brief comeback in 2023, EA Sports held the PGA Tour licence since 1990 but relinquished it in 2015. Take-Two’s first entry was PGA Tour 2K21 and while the recent gap has been longer than intended the plan was never to have yearly sequels, so that Canadian developer HB Studios could have time to make more substantial improvements between iterations.

But those who simply love a good golf game – rather than demanding rigorous simulations – should be more than happy with PGA Tour 2K25. HB Studios has clearly concentrated on getting the nuts and bolts of the gameplay right, with a new control system that offers the best simulacrum of swinging a golf club by moving a joystick up and down that we’ve ever seen. The player models aren’t very convincing, but the game’s 27 golf courses look and feel fantastic.

By the general standards of expensively acquired sports licences, HB Studios is a pretty small outfit, and that shows in certain aspects of PGA Tour 2K25 – most noticeably in its rendering of the golfers, both real and imagined. It has a Create-a-Player option, which lets you design someone to represent you at the tee, but whoever you go with inevitably ends up looking a bit weird, not helped by some shonky texture work.

At launch, PGA Tour 2K25 will only have officially rendered representations of 11 of the PGA Tour’s myriad real-life players, which is so few the women end up competing in the men’s tour just to make up the numbers. But if HB Studios have had to pick their battles it does feel as if they’ve chosen the right ones.

By comparison, the game’s physics more than passes muster – shots from the rough fly much as they would in real life, and if you chip halfway up a steeply sloping green, your ball will end up back at your feet, just as it should. Gusting winds will catch elevated approach shots, and on sunny days, greens at the top courses will feel like putting on glass. In short, PGA Tour 2K25 feels believable and realistic.

Plus, it uses a certain amount of smoke and mirrors to sidestep the issue of the unimpressive-looking virtual golfers. You play your rounds in isolation, without any playing partners around, and are occasionally shown standout shots performed by other golfers. The commentary is a bit uniform, with the same protagonists all the way through, but at least it mirrors the play with commendable accuracy.

PGA Tour 2K25 has an unexpectedly clever career mode, in which by playing you can level up both your golfer’s attributes and his or her clubs, and even the ball (giving a driver greater tolerance to hooks and shanks, for example, or adding to its power).

We started off on the Korn Ferry Tour (you can also opt to begin at the Q School which qualifies you for that tour or jump straight into the PGA Tour proper). But because we had cheated by selecting a new difficulty level (somewhat akin to a driving aid in a Formula One game) entitled Perfect Swing – which vastly reduces the penalties you receive for swinging imperfectly – we soon qualified for the PGA Tour by winning three tournaments.

If you also opt to play only a selection of holes for each round you can cheat further by tweaking the AI simulation of your golfer so that it picks up shots on the simulated holes that you don’t play. In other words, you can game PGA Tour 2K25 so it makes you feel like the greatest golfer in the world, which is fun. But eventually, anyone who is serious will turn Perfect Swing off, since it robs the clever control system of the fine control it offers.

If you thought that golf was a game for the aged, the career mode will attempt to disabuse you of that notion. One of its levelling up mechanics involves generating online followers, via your on-course heroics, your answers in post-tournament interviews, your rivalries with other pros, and your interactions with sponsors.

Traditionalists might not be happy with the vast amount of virtual clothing and golf equipment that the game throws at you, but a younger audience weaned on loot boxes will surely find that intriguing. The fact that you can pay real money for in-game currency to level up your golfer’s attributes is unforgivable, however. But then it is Take-Two, who are worse with microtransactions than even EA.

The career mode offers more variety than just playing a PGA Tour season: there are also cleverly conceived training exercises, which help hone different aspects of your game, and it’s also worth playing practice rounds, since those provide buffs that you take into your next tournament. You can also set up local couch-competitive play sessions on your favourite courses, and in a number of formats, including fourballs, which is highly commendable.