- Reviewed on: Xbox 360 (viewed on an HP PL4200N 42-inch plasma TV in 720p mode)
- Also available for: Nintendo Wii, PlayStation 3, Windows PC, Mac, PlayStation Portable, Nintendo DS
- The Good: New confidence meter and ball spin controls are well implemented
- The Bad: Poor golf course selection relative to earlier editions for previous platforms; analog swing controls have been crippled; new GamerNet feature adds a nearly infinite number of tedious player-created challenges
- The Verdict: EA duffs this year's version of the world's most popular golf videogame franchise
The immense popularity of sports video games doesn't make sense to me. Actually, that's not true. I understand that there are millions of sports fans who also play video games and that they'll likely buy games based on the sports they enjoy. What doesn't compute is why they spend $60 or $70 annually on what amounts to pretty much the exact same game, just with updated rosters and stats and maybe slightly tweaked controls.
Indeed, thanks to the low expectations of fans, sports games are a major cash cow for developers like Electronic Arts. The games represent a giant yearly paycheque and require fresh coat of paint to the menus and a few dozen new character models.
That said, I naturally pick up the new version of Tiger Woods PGA Tour when it's released each fall. That might sound hypocritical, but I think I have a good defence: each new game typically contains several new golf courses, which essentially acts like brand new levels that provide a spectrum of unique challenges.
Alas, the franchise has, in recent years, drastically scaled back the number of courses that appear in the games, now offering far fewer than appeared in editions released for previous generation platforms. And of those, many are decade-long holdovers, like Pebble Beach, St. Andrews and Spyglass Hill.
Of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08's 16 courses, only five are new and none of these are particularly dramatic or memorable (four are FedEx Cup courses, making me suspicious that their presence is due to lucrative sponsorship deals rather than their distinctive design).
That means the only reason to pick up this year's game - which looks nearly identical to Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 - is to check out the standard assortment of non-essential fluffy new stuff, which, as we're about to find out, hardly makes it worth the cash.
New thing no. 1: GamerNet
GamerNet seems to be EA Sports' way of riding the current wave of creating and sharing DIY multimedia online. It allows players to record some of their best moments on the course and post them for all the world to see - assuming anyone's interested - and turn them into challenges for other players. Manage to carry the ball 370 yards over water to hit a par 4 green off the tee? GamerNet suggests that you post it and let others try to match or beat your feat.
It's supposed to add value to the game; theoretically, an almost unlimited number of challenges could be posted online for players to try each and every day. Problem is, we already have a never-ending stream of monotonous tests in Tiger Woods Challenge mode, which tasks us to do basically the same things that appear on GamerNet, such as play three holes in a certain number of strokes, see how well we can recover from the trees, hit unreasonably long drives, and sink putts the length of a small train.
Needless to say, I spent little time with GamerNet.
New thing no. 2: Photo Game Face
EA Sports' powerful Game Face module, which leads players through a series of easy feature sculpting steps, now allows people to hook up a web cam to capture and map their own faces to their golfers.
The results can be impressive. The golfer I created with Photo Game Face using pictures of my mug had subtle facial features like small moles and nearly imperceptible wrinkles that I've never been able to depict using previous iterations of Game Face. In fact it's freakily accurate - my wife could hardly bare to look at the creepy CGI me I had created.
On the downside, it took nearly twenty minutes of thumb twiddling for the software to process the two pictures I fed in.
New thing no. 3: Control tweaks
The responsive analog controls in last year's edition may have made the game a touch easy - it took only a few hours of earning upgrades to move from shooting in the high 60s to the mid 50s - but at least it was fun. Unfortunately, it seems EA was bound and determined to make things more difficult this year.
Pulling back and pushing forward on the control stick is now an exercise in frustration. The slightest deviation in a straight back and forward path can and will send your ball careening left or right into water hazards and over out-of-bounds stakes. The problem never subsides - even after maxing out your golfer's abilities he or she will still be prone to the occasional scull and duff.
Almost as if they knew there was something wrong with their once reliable analog swing, EA threw in an optional three tap swing method. Press A once to initiate a swing, again at the top of the arc to control power, and a third time to control ball striking accuracy. Aside from being an obvious step backwards in our current era of movement oriented controls, it's been badly implemented; the meter moves far too quickly to provide any hope of improved control or accuracy.
In the end, the only control change that really benefits the player is a new method of hooking and slicing the ball, which involves tapping the left and right bumpers to adjust spin level.
New thing no. 4: Confidence
As fate would have it, the best new feature in this year's edition of Tiger Woods PGA Tour is also it's most understated. The game tracks every shot you make throughout your career, ranking how successfully you make certain kinds of shots (buried lies, carrying water, hitting narrow fairways), then adjusts the difficulty of that shot based on past attempts.
Fittingly dubbed "Confidence," this feature effectively mimics the real world golf experience of standing over a shot with either trembling with trepidation or cool self assuredness. When you see the circle representing the potential landing area of your ball shrink in size, you do indeed feel a wave of confidence knowing that you have the ability to throw the ball at the flagstick like a dart at a board. Conversely, when you see a massive landing area that dips into water hazards, sand, and grass bunkers, your composure goes right out the window.
Wait for next year - or Vijay Singh's game
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 has left such a sour taste in my mouth that I fear that I may be finished with golf video games for a while. Minor improvements like Confidence and simplified spin controls simply don't make up for EA cheaping out on course selection and messing with their proven analog swing system.
Perhaps I'll just kick back and wait for Ubisoft's upcoming golf game, which is apparently going to be headlined by Tiger's number-one rival, Vijay Singh. All they'd have to do to ensure I'm first in line on release day is deliver a dozen or so fresh new courses. And maybe that's what it would take to light a fire under the butts of EA Sports' designers.