PGA Tour 2K23 Review: Should You Buy It?
2K Games sent me a game code for PGA Tour 2K23 Tiger Woods Edition. After hours of playing the game, here’s my official review.
The game begins with tutorials showing you the different swings and making sure you understand how to play the game. However, in-game stuff like the scouting camera aren’t made clear that they are available and you have to go through a help menu to see the option.
The 3-click swing is a beautiful thing, and is my personal choice of which swing to use. You have a multitude of options when it comes to customizing your character, which includes many clothing brands, ball brands, and club brands.
The customization doesn’t end at appearance, there are a number of player archetypes you can choose from. Whether you want to be great with a driver or a master on the greens, you can pick the style you want to play and it will show you how it looks in a spider chart. There are skill trees for each aspect of your game from driving to putting, with skills that either activate to get you out of a slump or help keep a hot streak going.
You can choose to start your career in four places. You can start at Q-school, the Korn Ferry Tour, the Korn Ferry Tour Championship, or the PGA Tour. Rivalries are not available until you get to the PGA Tour, so you can’t really have one travel with you from the very beginning get tracked in the game which is unfortunate. The game is just as unforgiving as real golf, where very slight misfires on the swing stick can cause you to wildly shank a ball into the water and torpedo your round, I know from personal experience.
You can sign brand deals with companies for clubs, apparel, and balls. The one unfortunate part is that you can seemingly unsign with brands whenever you want, which isn’t exactly realistic but I appreciate the flexibility that players are given in PGA Tour 2K23.
The courses look beautiful, and you can recreate any of the non-licensed courses with the course designer that’s very easy to use.
Topgolf being in the game is a very fun points-based mini-game that you can play with your friends at home, or online. It’s also a great way to get better at the game so you aren’t putting from 20 feet for a triple bogey and so you can play more like Tiger Woods would.
Final Decision
Overall, I’d give this game an 8.5/10. There are some minor things that I don’t like, but overall it’s a great product, and would highly recommend buying it for yourself. The addition of playable pros and celebrity pros makes it fun and very enjoyable, but the menu things and having key factors not made very clear is a major turnoff and can lead to major frustration and struggle. I do think the game could be a little more forgiving.
The standard edition comes out this Friday, October 14th, 2022.
