Reviewed: November 25, 2005
Reviewed by: Mark Smith

Publisher
Electronic Arts

Developer
EA Canada

Released: November 17, 2005
Genre: Sports
Players: 1-4
ESRB: Everyone

7
8
7
8
7.2

Supported Features

I love my computer golf. I’ve been playing since the mid-80’s when the games were only in EGA and was quick to hop onboard the Access Express when they introduced the LINKS series with VGA graphics and RealSound – anyone remember that – music and speech using a normal PC speaker.

The thing with golf games is that once you achieve that certain level of photo-realism it’s hard to do much more other than minor refinements. For me, Links 2004 is still the crowning achievement in Xbox golf, although I have been known to bust up the links with the Outlaw Golf crowd. I’ve dabbled with the PGA games, even before Tiger Woods slapped his name on the series, but it was the PSP that actually got me to take a good look at Tiger Woods PGA.

So when Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06 was announced for the new Xbox 360 I just had to see what they could possibly do with the power of this new system. The results are both impressive and disappointing, and while Tiger on the 360 looks great, little if anything has changed from the other console versions of the same game.

To make things worse they lock down the courses forcing you to earn them through a grueling career mode that starts off with an endless string of training exercises. These mini-games are admittedly fun at first and even a bit addictive if you really want to go for the Master ranking on each, but tedium will set in fast and you’ll be racing through the challenges just to up your stats and get to a real game of golf.

As you complete the various challenges you will earn skill points in several categories as well as cash. You can then use these skill points to increase your player attributes in categories like putting, recovery, driving, accuracy, and even luck. As you successfully complete each challenge one or more new ones become available until you eventually unlock the Q-School.

Q-School is a vicious 4-round event at TPC Sawgrass featuring all 18 holes. Now this wouldn’t be so bad if the four rounds took you on a tour of four different courses, but no, you have to play Sawgrass four times in a row against a computerized roster where anything less than –20 for the series will probably have you retrying the whole thing again. Because, if you don’t place in the top five you can’t enter the PGA tour and play the game proper.

I can’t tell you that Tiger Woods isn’t fun. I really love playing the game, but it won’t be fun for long. With only six courses locked into a predetermined time of day and fixed weather system, you simply don’t have enough variety here to keep you entertained for as long as the designers want you to play.

For the career mode you will create your own character using an impressive create-a-golfer system that allows you to create a male or female golfer adjusting hundreds of possible combinations then dress and equip them with all sorts of items from the pro shop that slowly unlock as you explore the career mode.

As previously mentioned, your character has various abilities that slowly increase as you assign skill points, and you can further enhance these abilities by adding items like a visor, a watch, gloves, socks, shoes, shirts, and of course, specialty balls, clubs, and grips. You have to pick and choose your accessories carefully as there might be six available visors but each might enhance a different attribute.

But golfing for items or even for cash can get boring when you are simply golfing for the sake of becoming a better golfer to golf on the same courses over and over for more cash and more items…are you going into overload yet?

Controls are problematic and I really wish that designers would just let gamers assign functions to whatever buttons they like. In the case of Tiger, the default swing is with the left analog stick. Pull pack, pause, push forward straight and true and watch the ball fly. There is some tricky timing involved that replicates a true golf swing and if you do it right you can crush the ball with some great visual effects.

The problem lies in the power boost, which is locked to the LB button. I challenge you all to try and swing with your left thumb while rapidly tapping the LB with your left index finger. So, the obvious solution is to go to the menu and invert the left and right stick functions. This works really well and allows you to swing with the right stick and tweak your ball spin with the left, but only until you fill the Gamebreaker meter and then you need to rapidly tap the A button during your backswing. Doh!

Since it takes the better part of nine holes to fill the Gamebreaker meter I settled for the alternate control mode that allows me to use the LB on most every shot. The rest of the game controls are pretty basic. The B button pans the camera to the pin location and the D-pad allows you to move the marker and adjust the max power and angle for your next shot. The X button cycles between punch, chip, and full power shots and the A button cycles various camera angles.

My only real complaint with the gameplay is that it is too easy. Even before graduating Q-School I had already logged a hole-in-one, 8 eagles, and more birdies than I could count. Birdies aren’t really an issue, but I’ve played hundreds of hours of Links and Outlaw Golf not to mention more than 80 hours of Hot Shots Golf on the PSP and have never gotten a hole-in-one and can count my eagles on one hand.

I know I probably shouldn’t complain, especially since one of those eagles on hole 18 of round 4 of Q-School kept me from repeating the entire event, but eagles start to loose their special value when you can manage to pull one off nearly every game. I can only imagine how many more of these shots will be dropping when my luck attribute gets higher.

Pebble Beach is remarkable, especially with the coastal holes where you can see the pounding waves crash on the rocks and spray up onto the green. There must be a dozen types of grass including wild grass with long blades that are individually rendered and can hide not only your ball but also your golfer.

The water is gorgeous with ripples and realistic reflections, but the splash is pretty weak if you sink a ball. The ball just disappears and concentric rings ripple outward. Sand is meticulously groomed and raked and will suck your ball in deep if you stray into its trap.

The player models are exquisite and the clothing uses Normal Mapping for ultra-realistic fabric modeling and wrinkles. It really gets you excited about trying on new clothes and adding new equipment. Each character can also be customized with a variety of animations for when they do well and when they screw up as well as choosing from a variety of swing animations including, for the first time ever, Tiger Woods’ actually swing fully motion-captured and reproduced with stunning detail. If you look through the library of animations you will see several famous reactions recreated for the game.

During character creation you are allowed to pick a voice for your character from a choice of several. It’s almost like auditioning a voice actor as they read off popular catch phrases. Throughout the game you will hear all sorts of comments including some hilarious references to Happy Gilmore and Caddy Shack.

And you can’t have a PGA golf game without commentary, and Feherty and McCord are in rare form with all new dialogue. Sure, you’ll hear some old favorites but there is more new stuff than old and they had me laughing aloud more than once. I also love the fact that they are constantly insulting me and putting down my golf skills.

Sadly, there is probably more than 100 hours of gameplay contained within all the challenges and tour games, but when you have to stretch that across six courses you will either need to pace yourself and play the game over the course of a year or risk going insane from the repetitive gameplay.

Xbox 360 Achievements are ready to be unlocked but most are linked to online achievements including one totally evil milestone that wants you to play 1000 online games. Even if you play only half of a course that’s still 9000 holes of golf. See you in the rubber room.

While this 360 game isn’t as hacked up as other EA Sports offerings it still can’t be called next-gen, especially when last-gen offers more content. I will eagerly be awaiting next year’s release that will hopefully return the missing courses, add some random weather, and hopefully a TV-style presentation now that EA has the ESPN license.

If you don’t already have a version of Tiger Woods on another system, and if your PC simply can’t run this year’s release then by all means, check out this game. You’ll definitely have fun; just not as much as you should for a system with all this power.