Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08
Score: 74% ESRB: Everyone Publisher: EA Sports Developer: Tiburon Media: DVD/1 Players: 1 - 4 Genre: Sports (Golf)/ Simulation
Graphics & Sound: A hush falls over the crowd. For some reason, the announcers that are a mile away are whispering. You pick a shirt up off the floor and drop it to see what direction the wind is blowing. You take your stance, turn your club face out and swing away. Throughout the swing, the only thing I can think about is, "I hope my strap on the Wii controller holds so I don't break my TV." That's right folks; it is time for the Wii's second Tiger Woods iteration in Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08. Once again you swing for the green. The scenery is beautiful. Even with the Wii's decidedly non next-gen graphics, everything looks crisp and clean. With all of the animation tweaks that you can perform to make the swing look as much like you as possible, I was happy to see the models' skins could keep up without the old school hole in the texture. With the game face feature, and if done right, you can pretty much clone yourself into the game. As is now standard with the EA front end menu, you have the ability to cycle through all of the music. There are quite a few tracks for a game that doesn't have any in-game music. The soothing repetition of the announcer's voice, the crack of the ball and the roar of the crowd are all the symphony your ears will hear, except maybe a horn blast while being taunted, but we will get to that later.
Gameplay: In Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08, man continues the centuries' old quest to knock a little white ball into a hole with a stick. Only here we are using a little white stick, and we seem to have lost our ball. No matter how you slice it, or hook it, golf is golf. Here we forego the pesky details of hand/eye coordination and power. Everything you have come to know about the game from the previous version is here. Line up your shot, adjust for the wind and watch out for hazards. So if golf is golf, then what is new here for '08? Confidence and taunting are two new attributes to the game. Your confidence has everything to do with how well you choose your shot, your club and your ability to get the ball in the hole. You will have a confidence bar that will build as you play well. This can help you out when you finally do get to a particularly difficult shot, as it will improve your chance of hitting a perfect shot. Now one of my favorite new parts is your ability to mess with an opponent via taunting. Blurring the screen, causing a horn to blow, or even changing the wind is all in your control. With a few flicks of the wrist, you can cause someone to attempt homicide with the Wii controller. In the mini game section, you now have a few new game options. Is the whole expanse of the entire 18 holes too much for you to handle?Then just challenge a friend to the new Mini Putt game. Who wants to walk around an entire course when you can play putt-putt. If you are good, you can play Stableford which is a points-based game where the better your shot, the higher your points. Finishing out the new mini-games section is Best Ball and Four Ball. The best individual score is used as the team score. In Best Ball, that score applies to stroke play and in Four Ball it applies to the match play. Our last new feature is the Elimination mode. Build a team of eight, and compete against them. Last man standing wins.
Difficulty: It may come as a shock to some, but Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 is not Wii golf. This game has all of the nuances of swinging a real club. Now, again we may be ruling out skill, hand/eye coordination or even just exposure to real light, but this game is meant to be a simulation of the real thing. Golf is not that easy. I actually believe that there are less modifications made to a car used in Nascar than there are to the swing mechanics in this game. Your wrist position, back swing, or fore swing are all here and can be fully adjusted. Unfortunately, as much as the Wii controller lends itself to this game, there were quite a few times in which the game and the controller did not want to get along. Control is a big issue; hell, it is the only issue. When you are on a real course, you can understand that things are not always going to pan out. On a virtual course, I expect that my skill with a controller should trump my inadequacy to swing a real club. I should be better here. Well, I am here to tell you it will take a little time to perfect your swing either way.
Game Mechanics: There is a lot here to digest, from the look of your avatar and swing mechanics. You can spend hours just adjusting your appearance. It feels very much like the Sims meets Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08. I am sure someone out there will indeed spend more time on the external facade and only minutes actually playing. It is on the level of people who spend all of their time in racing games dressing their cars. Only there, they can actually get performance boosts from the parts. You are not going to have a better day out on the course because you chose plaid over vertical stripes. I suspect the next evolution in golf games is whether the clubs you choose and the balls hit actually make a difference. The controls are either going to have to tighten up more or loosen up a little. As it stands, the Wii-mote is not sensitive enough for the real world simulation of exactly turning your club face out while you swing all of the time. If there is some code written into the game that I am unaware of that adds a lot of chance to swing, forcing it to sometimes fly straight and other times veer off, then what is the point of allowing the control to do it? If it is going to randomize based on other factors, than take the attempt to control it out. They may say there is a sitting version of the swing, but there is clearly only one way to be satisfied with the swing and that is standing up. I had mixed emotions about this game. I liked the level of complexity on the surface, but found the minutae to get a bit old. Maybe I was looking for a little bit of the Wii Golf fun and less of the swing tuning. Alas, however, the sum of its parts did help raise my "on the fence" feelings of this game. I believe what keeps it from being an exceptional game is the loss of design elements and frustrations with control issues. A solid game, just missing that intangible element to really drive it home with me.
-WUMPUSJAGGER, GameVortex Communications AKA Bryon Lloyd
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