Genesis

PGA Tour Golf II

Electronic Arts made major changes to the graphics and difficulty in this edition, but the results are mixed. Graphically, the golfers are now digitized images, a big improvement over the illustrated golfers in the last game. The courses look slightly more realistic, but not as clean looking. It can be difficult to tell when the fairway ends and the rough begins. PGA II is also noticeably easier. In the first game, it was difficult to hit the ball perfectly, but in this game, you can do it almost too easily. Other new features include six courses (up from four), and a Skins Challenge. This game is not dramatically better than the first, but it's still a lot of fun. Unfortunately, the confusing drop-menu system is still used to configure the game. My favorite memory of this game is cranking up the sound in order to hear the birds (at 2 o'clock in the morning), and then getting my eardrums blown out by the loud, obnoxious music that plays at the end of each round!

I know I'm probably going to take some heat from fans of the PGA series here, but so be it. To me this game is too hard (which isn't a bad thing in and of itself), but that coupled with being rather ugly and not having much to listen to really kept me from getting sucked into things anymore than I did. It's far from a bad game, and I really like the newer PGA games and even more so the Tiger Woods series so I'm not bashing this game unduly because it's a sports game, but it needed to learn from its predecessors. Polygames needed to remove a few of the too many courses and spend more time in the graphics and audio area. As much as I hate to admit it, I like Arnold Palmer and 36 Holes better. Both had less game play overall, but Arnold Palmer did the sound right and 36 Holes did the graphics right, and this game only got the gameplay partly right, but it was longwinded when it needed a perfect balance of all three so it feels barely above average to me.