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Of course these two new features wouldn’t be that great if there wasn’t an actual game to play! Right from the start you will notice the game is far more difficult to play, and those of you that mainly stick to Tour Season will have a nasty surprise, you will get your butt handed to you. So how do you level up your golfer to make sure they can advance in the Tour? There is always skills training, which can also help you practice but the Tiger Challenge mode is not only a great compliment to PGA Tour Season mode, but it will help you level up faster as well. Luckily in PGA Tour you can also choose the length of the matches, which is a much-needed touch. Tiger Challenge features seven “bosses” ultimately leading up to you going against Tiger. To get to each of the bosses you must complete goals such as long drive shots, getting the upper hand on golfers, play golf games, and so on. You are rewarded plenty of cash for every event, and as you go along you level up within the game depending on how you do. The A.I. is less likely to over-compensate this year as well, and does seem to genuinely screw up at times like a real golfer.
Hitting the ball straight seems to be harder this year also. Green chipping can be a bit of a process this time around, even harder than putting. The putting preview mechanic is better this year also, borrowing more from the Outlaw Golf series (thanks to EA having the developers that worked on the game) and it gives you a quick putt preview showing you where the ball would go if you hit it, then allowing you to adjust accordingly. You can fade your shots, meaning you aim at one area, but it will curve to somewhere else, which is especially useful for the curvier courses. In total their are sixteen new courses, five of them being new with noticeable visual upgrade to the older ones, with at least two more heading to the game via DLC on Xbox Live. You also have a confidence meter in the game now, which helps determines how well you do a shot, and how big the projected radius for the shot will be. Depending on how many times you did a course you will be more confident at it, but overall your confidence will get better. It can never go down thankfully, and the game doesn’t penalize you for doing bad, your confidence just won’t go up. It also tracks how well you do on each course, by hole, and it even graphs it for you. If anything, it helps you judge where you need more improvement. The gameplay improvements overall have made the game more challenging, and given it a extra layer of depth.
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Visually Tiger looks to be at the base of where it should have been in the first place. The courses are fully painted, with no lines dividing where the maps were skinned. To the causal player of the series you probably won’t notice to many differences, as they are subtle and seamless which I think was the whole idea, but for the Tiger fan your in for a bit of a treat. The rough is far more detailed; the sand traps have better textures, and even the shadows of trees swaying in the wind move, casting realistic shadows. The irony of the wind making the more realistic trees sway is that the clouds are static. It is a golf game, not a whole lot of action, so it would have been nice if they put in a bit more effort there. The new courses definitely stand out, and it is slightly noticeable that limited attention was given to previous year courses. The animations of your golfer, and the rest of the golfers are a bit better, but they still need some work, as they can feel a bit stiff, but Tiger’s face, expressions and mannerisms or as eerily realistic as ever. So much so that when I was playing the game in hi-def a friend of mine thought it was a video of him actually playing. The sound is well, not bad. The soundtrack is forgettable, but it matches the game at a mellow tempo with a competitive edge. The background noise such as geese, and airplanes overhead is still there, and the crowds’ reaction helps to gauge how well you are doing. The biggest problem with the sound is the commentary as it hasn’t changed much from the previous years and I really hate the guys doing it. Sometimes they can be helpful hinting as to what to do, but most of the time they insult you to an unnecessary point.
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If you are a hardcore PGA Tour fan or not, there is bound to be something for you to like in this game, if it be the Gamernet, Photo Gameface, gameplay, or modes you will enjoy yourself. Tiger Woods PGA Tour series hasn’t had such a dramatic improvement in quite awhile, and it looks like EA Tiburon’s first golf outing is a hole-in-one.
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