Golf Video Games: Top 20 Golf Games of All-Time

1. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14

Gameplay, simulation, and a history lesson in “Legends of the Majors” mode all propelled Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14 as the number one golf game of all-time.

Developer: EA Tiburon

Publisher: EA

Release Date: March 2013

I don’t know how many hours I’ve put into this game, but I’ve put in a lot. Let’s put it this way, I’ve played over 99 18-hole tournaments and completed over 20,000 total holes, so I’ve put in a couple of hours or so.

The reason for all those hours is because this is truly the best golf game of all-time and one of the great sports game of all-time.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14 was the first golf game to actually nail the career mode. It had just about all the events on a typical PGA Tour schedule.

From the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines to the Zurich Classic at TPC Louisiana to the Deutsche Bank Championship at TPC Boston to the Tour Championship at East Lake and everything else in between.

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Including all four majors; the first time that has been done in a golf game. Plus, the career mode just wasn’t just shoehorned in. As you progressed through the years the majors would rotate courses in and out.

One year you might play Pebble Beach, St. Andrews, and Whistling Straits, while the next year might be something like Torrey Pines, Royal Birkdale, and Oak Hill.

Plus, the courses that will be hosting major championships in real life do so in the proper years in this game.

For example, Pebble Beach will be hosting the U.S. Open Championship in 2019 and in the game if you get to 2019 in your career, the U.S. Open will be held at Pebble Beach that year. It’s the little things like that, that make this game special.

One of the new features is simulation mode and it just nails it. We talked about it with Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 dabbled in it some simulation features, well Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14 goes all in and hits a hole-in-one.

I remember when the demo for this game came out and I had never played a demo for as long as I did.

I want to say the demo came out about a couple of weeks before the full retail game would come out and I played the heck out of the demo for those two weeks.

The demo introduced me to simulation mode and it got its hooks in me. The game absolutely nailed the feel of what it’s like to be out on the course.

Simulation mode strips out all the help that you get on easier modes. You can’t see where you are hitting the ball, you don’t know what the wind direction, nor how much the wind is blowing, you can’t zoom up to the pin on the fairways or green, and you have to swing at an angle on the analog stick. The gameplay is basically perfect.

It feels different to play with Jack Nicklaus compared to Gary Player to Sam Snead to Ben Hogan. Every golfer has their own unique identities with different attributes and different swing shapes.

Not only that, but “Legends of the Majors” is one of the best features in a sports video game. You go through some of the most memorable events and shots in golfing history and try to duplicate that.

It spans all the way to the beginning of golf to (at the time) present day 2013. It’s one of those features that you could spend a number of hours on if you choose to.

I could go on and on, but I’ll wrap it up that this is just a special game that you have to play if you are a golfing fan. If you want a more in-depth review of this game in particular, you can check out my review of the game here.

Next: Top 30 Golf Courses in the World

I wrote this right around launch time and my feelings for the game haven’t changed. Like Jack Nicklaus’ game before it, Tiger Woods’ game went out on top.