Rory McIlroy PGA Tour is a sports video game developed by EA Tiburon and published by Electronic Arts for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
It is an entry in the EA Sports PGA Tour franchise, and was the first series since 1999 not to feature Tiger Woods as its namesake, replacing him with Rory McIlroy.
The game was also a sponsored for the third edition of World Wrestling Entertainment pay-per-view Battleground, which was taking place on July 19, 2015 (three days after it's release) from Scottrade Center Arena in St. Louis, Missouri.
[2] Electronic Arts' PGA Tour franchise was placed on a hiatus following its 2013 release, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14; in October 2013, EA announced that the game would also be the final installment in the series co-branded with Tiger Woods, and that EA has rejected him for license extension would be replaced by a favor of new title golfer model for its next edition.
NBC Golf analysts Rich Lerner and Frank Nobilo replaced CBS Sports' Jim Nantz and David Feherty as the game's commentators.
As an entire course is now treated as a single map, errant shots can also land and be played from areas that were previously considered out-of-bounds and incurred penalties.
[6][3][4][5] Due to an expired license, Augusta National and the Masters Tournament do not appear in the game, although an EA representative has suggested that the course may be re-introduced as DLC in the future.
[22][23] Polygon gave Rory McIlroy PGA Tour a 6 out of 10; the game was praised for the improvements brought by its new engine (including its visual appearance, short loading times, and ball physics), the new putting system, its career progression, which now allowed players to "[deepen their] package of abilities instead of forcing him or her to be pure power, pure accuracy or down the middle", "lifelike" crowds, Golf Channel commentators that were "much more conversational than the wooden and overacted delivery of Jim Nantz", albeit somewhat repetitive.
As a result, Polygon concluded that Rory McIlroy PGA Tour was "a smooth-playing game of golf, which makes the inability to use its new gameplay on the old features fans loved even more regrettable.
"[9] IGN was similarly negative, giving the game a 5.5 out of 10; although praising the new swing modes and assists for allowing players to customize gameplay to better suit their play style, and the new Frostbite engine for being "appreciably superior than the links of the last generation—even if some of the textures are a little flat and a lot of the course features tend to pop in around the path of the ball's flight", Rory McIlroy PGA Tour was criticized for its lack of content and the removal of features that were present in previous installments of EA Sports' PGA Tour franchise.