Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07
This just proves looks aren't everything.
Published: November 30, 2006
Stroke Play, Match Play, Skins, Stableford, Alternate Shot, Best-Ball and Four-Ball options are all there for the picking, as are T-I-G-E-R (think HORSE) and 21. All of this, plus a handful of mini-games and the Tiger Challenges (which is how you'll beef up your create-a-player stats), offer enough variety that the game's dozen or so courses don't quite seem so lacking... at least for a while.
You can take most of these modes online too, and perhaps because of the less demanding nature of the game, there are far fewer hitches than in either of EA's other online-ready launch games. It's not that there aren't hitches (I still maintain that the servers PS3 owners get to use are ill-equipped for even light play), but it's far more manageable. The turn-based nature of things also keeps it slow and more languid, perfect for nursing a beer or, if you happen to swing that way, something a little more potent (a bong rip per hole!).
One of the biggest problems with the game, though, still lies in the putting. This time around you can add a little top or back spin to putts, but the issue of not really knowing exactly how hard you're hitting things is only exacerbated by the analog swing system. At least the green reading system, a take-off of the Hot Shots system where lines travel along a grid at varying speeds depending on how steep the grade, is bolstered by a handy bit of color-coding to indicate elevation too, but again, this info is only as useful as pre-planning for a shot that requires plenty of guess work in the power.
What really puzzles me, though, is just how blah the graphics are as a whole. Yes, you'll get some wide open courses, and yes, there are some extremely nice (and fairly varied) animations this time around, but all this talk of high-detail player models just wasn't there for me. Sure, Tiger looks fairly good, but most of the other 15 pro golfers don't look nearly as good, and maybe it's just Uncanny Valley fears speaking, but the Tiger model looks a little on the weird side.
The courses as a whole look fairly good from afar, but up close the textures quickly betray the look of things like pixel shaded water (and good lord, you really don't want to see the Pebble Beach coastline in HD if you're hoping the game will be a graphical powerhouse). The framerate on flybys is a little dodgy and things like vegetation and the semi-reactive crowd are just painfully blah.
The audio, similarly, just doesn't hold up to repeated listenings. Yes, there's some nice ambiance from time to time, but the tag-team jerkface duo of David Feherty and Gary McCord still make you hate life if you botch a shot even a little. With so little for the game to fall back on beyond the normal effects, there's little here to actually give your ears, though I suppose that's in line with real golf -- or at least golf presentations.
Speaking of presentation, there's little here beyond some basic ticker integration from ESPN. You'll get some SportsCenter updates around every half hour or so, but it's really not much to speak of. Still, it's there, just like the online play, and certainly helps add a little more meat to things, just don't expect anything mind-blowing. In fact, it's pretty safe to say that little about Tiger's first PS3 outing will rock your socks off.
It's certainly solid enough, and easily the better of EA's sports offerings at launch, but again, the polarizing nature of the controls will directly influence how you feel about the game as a whole. If you can live with them, you'll find more than enough depth and variety to sink your teeth into. If not... well, there's always Hot Shots... whenever that finally hits.
