The Golf Club Tees Off This Spring

As EA Sports takes a break for a year to re-brand and redesign it’s golf game sans Tiger Woods for a 2015 release, a new golf game will be making its way to next-gen consoles this year to fill the void.

HB Studios, who has worked with EA Sports in the past on the Wii versions of Madden NFL 13 and Fifa 12, has official revealed The Golf Club to the world. Available on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC this spring, The Golf Club will provide gamers with “an accessible, high quality, social and customizable golf experience with minimal to zero loading times.”

The game doesn’t have an official affiliation with the PGA so, with the lack of professional golfers to fill out the roster, The Golf Club will rely on its social and cross platform features to draw in players. It will include a course creator that will give players full control over the design, look and feel of their very own golf course that can be shared, and played on, across all three platforms: PC, PS4 and Xbox One.

Other game features include:

"INTUITIVE CONTROL SYSTEMWe’ve created and fine tuned a swing mechanic that is more about feeling and fluidity above the users’ accuracy of hitting a marker on a power bar. Whilst anyone will be able to pick the controller up and play comfortably, the best players on the global leaderboards will be those with the best feel for the different golf shots and who are able to take into account ball lie, weather and terrain conditions. INSTANTANEOUS GAMEPLAYNo loading times between holes means you are straight back on the Tee after sinking your putt on the previous green. Also, minimal loading times into a new course make for a refreshing change to your typical console game. UNLIMITED COURSESNo more getting bored of the courses given to you by the developer. With four clicks you can generate a unique course never seen before that’s ready to play. GENERATE COURSESWith four clicks of a button from the main menu the game will generate for you a never been played before course. The variation is infinite!If you don’t like the course that’s been generated, one click and you can generate a new one.If you want to tailor the courses a little more there are high-level options available to you. Examples of these are the number of holes, par distribution, fairway width, number of bunkers, green size, green slope and rough coverage."

You can view the official game trailer and a look at the course creator feature in the videos below. Screenshots are available in the slideshow at the top of the post.

Mike’s Musings: Minimal to zero loading times? Well, sign me up! Seriously though, even if it’s “only golf”, I’m glad a new company is getting in on the next-gen sports game market early. With EA Sports not putting out a new golf game until likely the latter stages of 2015, the floor belongs solely to The Golf Club which makes it the perfect time to carve out a large chunk of the golf gaming market which, believe or not, isn’t that small of a group. We’ll see how this game looks and feels when we are actually able to give it a test swing.