MEET THE NEW BOSS, WORSE THAN THE OLD BOSS (Tiger Woods PGA 10 (Xbox 360))

Member Name: stuleg

Product:	Tiger Woods PGA 10 (Xbox 360)
Date:	27/08/09 (63 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Moves the franchise on, Introduction of Weather

Disadvantages: Doesn't have the Wow factor of previous incarnations

Thank the lord for video games; only in a virtual world can this thirty something with limited sporting skills pit his wits against the great and the good in various sports. In football games I can cross like Beckham and score like Rooney; in racing games I can go head to head with the likes of Button or Hamilton; and in golfing terms I can swing like a demon as I try to outplay Tiger Woods. For someone who thoroughly agrees with the Mark Twain quote declaring golf to be "a good walk spoilt", Tiger Woods PGA tour 10 for the Xbox 360 is as close to playing the actual game I wish to get. Swapping a five iron or putter for a joypad means I can indulge my fantasies of being a top class sportsman, without being laughed off the course after one errant shot too many slices the ball every which way but towards the hole.

So, how does playing golf on a console work then?

Actually it works surprisingly well. You use the left hand stick on the joypad to swing your club and assorted buttons to aim, choose clubs and generally prepare your shot. There is a great deal of science and planning behind the button use, so those wanting to grab a joypad and hit hard will inevitably come up short. Finesse is very much the name of the game as you have to draw the left stick back and then push forward fast without deviating from a straight action, any wobble or slew will be magnified tenfold on screen and send your ball into the sand, bush or any other lateral hazard.

Hang on, there's a new Tiger Woods Console game out every year, what makes this version better than the last?

I have a major problem with EA Sports, the software company behind the Tiger Woods franchise. Every year, without fail, they produce a new Madden, FIFA and Tiger Woods game. Now this makes me somewhat sceptical. I am often left wondering if they are truly producing the very best game for the consumer, or are they holding back ideas and innovations to put in the next game in the franchise? Personally I'd like to see them do away with this annual game release and instead deliver a fuller, more polished game every couple of years or so. EA are quick to laud the improvements this game offers, including a new Putting method which frankly makes it twice as hard as far as I can see. There are also more crowds surrounding the holes, which with my wayward shots just mean more people to hit!

Game modes

Career- By far the mainstay of the game is the career mode, where you take your golfer on the PGA tour to try and win matches, earn money and raise your skill and attribute level. Depending on how well you perform so more tournaments are unlocked, thus delivering to you more prize money and unlocking more goodies in the club shop. All the while you are trying your hardest to improve your game, commentary is provided by Scott Van Pelt from ESPN and Kelly Tillman from the Golf Channel to encourage, or in my case, deride my efforts.

Tournament Challenge - This is a clever little feature recreates famous golf shots from history with you taking the place of the original golfer. Weather, lighting and course conditions are painstakingly recreated to produce an experience as close to the historical shot as possible, now all you have to do is step up to the plate and see if you can deliver on the famous moment in golf.

Mini Games - If you've had enough of the gruelling PGA season you can opt for some fun mini games to sharpen your instincts and let off some steam. Closest to the pin is self explanatory, while target gives you twenty balls with which to strike a giant bull's-eye. My favourite of the mini games is Capture the flag, in which you take turns trying to hit targets to capture them.

$27,000 for a Polo shirt! Is it made from fabricated gold!

As you progress through the game you earn money and unlock items in the club shop. All manner of clothing is available; from trousers, hats, gloves, sunglasses and tops. You also get to upgrade clubs for that added helping hand with your game. The more expensive items actually have the effect of helping different facets of your game, one particularly expensive pair of shoes for example adds a couple of points to your putting game, while a certain golfing glove may aid your long shot. I do feel that the makers have lost any sense of reality with the pricing of the items; one polo shirt that adds two attribute points to your long shot costs a mind-blowing $27,000. That said, even finishing stone cold last in a PGA tournament netted me winnings of $10,000, so I guess the items are priced so that you have to put in that little bit of work in order the afford them all, otherwise you'd soon be able to afford the whole shop even if you were the worst golfer ever to pick up a joypad.

Courses, Courses everywhere

This incarnation of the franchise boasts a massive twenty-seven courses from around the world, nine more than in the last game. Each course is delightfully detailed graphically, with the crisp blue skies and lush greens at Pebble Beach juxtaposing the greyness of St Andrews, complete with heather and brush to lose your ball in. The weather feature also compliments each course well, so you can expect plenty of wind and rain on the United Kingdom courses while the South African and American counterparts get a clear, still climate. My personal favourite has to be the Gary Player Country Club in South Africa - lots of undulating greens and water hazards, and not a drop of rain in sight.

239 People died of lightning strikes on golf courses last year!

So you've invested time in perfecting your game, got that joypad strike done to a tee, then EA go and throw a spanner in the proverbial works by introducing dynamic weather conditions! Deep joy! Now I can get rain and wind battered on the course at St Andrews. Of course all these weather permutations cause your ball to perform in a myriad of odd ways, that putt may be judged to perfection on a dry, sunny course but throw some rain down and it reacts accordingly, more often than not coming up short. Despite my protestations the introduction of weather to the Tiger Woods franchise is long overdue, and is executed rather well.

Achievements

Any Xbox 360 owner worth their salt will be familiar with the achievement system. In layman's terms these are points gained by unlocking tasks or completing set targets within a game, usually one thousand points are available to unlock and add to your gamescore per game. The purpose is for other game players to interpret your gamescore and decide how good a gamer you are, generally the higher the gamescore a player has the better a player they are, of course it could also be argued that the higher the gamescore the more time the player plays games. Tiger Wood's 10 has the requisite one thousand points to unlock, but unlike previous games in the series they seem quite hard to obtain. Whereas in the 2008 version of the game thirty achievement points were gained for a hole in one, this year no such prize was forthcoming, leaving me feeling more than a little deflated that my perfect shot from tee to hole was not rewarded. This time rewards are modernised with a couple geared more towards excelling in the poor weather, "Shoot under Par through a Gale Force wind in a Traditional or Online game mode 18-hole round" to gain a mere 25 points sounds like a lot of hard work to me!

Can I play it online?

Playing any game online greatly lengthens the replay value, and nowhere is this truer than in the Tiger Wood's games. Daily tournaments are played, where you can decide whether your overall score is good enough to be posted online for posterity. You can also play the pros where scores are posted against real golfers and the actual PGA leader board. Alas my skill level is such that I am in no hurry to share my woeful efforts for others to see.

Is all this clubbing and slicing child friendly?

Even in its darker incarnations it's hard to imagine golf as harmful to kids, save for an errant ball strike or stroppy golfer uttering expletives after one slice shot too many. PEGI, the video game rating people, have this game pegs as suitable for anyone aged three or over. There is no swearing, no violence and definitely no scenes of a sexual nature, indeed the only issue with a three year old playing as I see it is whether they would be able to fully grasp the control system.

Good points

The weather is definitely a plus point, despite my protestations at getting wet, in a virtual sense. I also really like the look of the vistas, especially the glint and shimmer of any water featured. Sound wise the game seems to have evolved too; you get to hear cheers from other holes as you play, a sure sign that the opposition are doing better than you. Maybe it was my imagination too that the crowds on the American based courses seemed to whoop and were generally more raucous than their European counterparts, if this "Yankee loudness" is indeed a new feature it's a clever one.

Bad points

The attributes system can be a little harsh should you have an off day. Power, putting and short game scores are built up painstakingly over the career of your golfer yet one bad round can undo many games and many weeks of hard work. The golfers you play against also seem to be a lot better than they were in the last game, starting a match with a leader fifteen shots better than you really dents the confidence and has you wondering if it's worth even trying. I know its Tiger Wood's game but really, it would be nice to at least be able to get close to him, score wise. My next bugbear centres on the mini games, a great idea to break the monotony of career mode except that they require two real people to participate. Great, if you want to sign into Xbox live and wait for someone to join you, or if you have a mate handy, but not so good when you want a quick game or you don't have anyone to play with. How hard would it have been for the bods at EA to make all mini games one player, with those that need more than one participant able to progress with a computer based comrade? Next, and by far the issue that bugs me the most with this game, is the omission of the Instant Challenges. This feature, in last year's game, set a number of tasks to be performed in order to gain points and unlock more Instant Challenges and golfers. Putting and longest drive contests were a really enjoyable facet of last year's game, as you tried to outdo the challenges, and yet, for reasons unknown, the whole Instant challenge section has been removed completely. Finally, if you create a golfer the changes are only aesthetic, rather than actual. To explain this, if your golfer is given a fuller figure, his or her arms will disappear into his body when a club is swung, because the swinging action is modelled on a thinner torso. I know this is not a major problem, but added to the others it's another reason why the game is not as polished as it should be.

Conclusion

Little doubt that this latest incarnation in the Tiger Woods franchise is a fine game, and as such I award it a generous four stars out of five. But it just doesn't grip me like last year's game, which I thoroughly immersed myself in and felt genuinely saddened when I'd completed it. Those new to the franchise could do worse than buying this game, but for those of us who are familiar with previous versions it is probably not worth parting with close to £40 for what seems to me to be a backwards step. Let's hope next year's game addresses some of the issues, and brings back my beloved Instant Challenges.

Summary: Buy last years game, it's better