Tiger Woods PGA Tour Updated Hands-On

It's kind of hard to believe that there's less than three weeks to go before the PSP launches in the US. But this reality gained a bit more credence here in the GameSpot offices when a shipment of PSP games from Electronic Arts, all in varying states of completion, showed up. Among them was Tiger Woods PGA Tour, which, while it noticeably and understandably isn't an exact port of last year's Tiger Woods game for the PlayStation 2, still gave us a good surprise with the number of features and overall quality.

The build we've been playing appears to be pretty much complete as far as the features go. Right from the main menu we could access quick play, legend tour, legend challenges, party play, and head-to-head modes. If you've been playing the big-boy Tiger games, most of these will be pretty self-explanatory and each will scratch a particular itch: quick play is good for a one-off match; legend tour is the game's career mode; legend challenges tests specific skills; and head-to-head is the game's wireless multiplayer mode. The one mode that really caught our attention was party play, in which a group can play competitively on a single PSP, round-robin style.

Once we actually got out onto the green for the first time, everything felt instantly familiar, as the interface and controls are lifted straight from the other Tiger Woods games. The D pad governs shot placement, the analog disc is used for swinging, and you can add extra punch to your shots, as well as control the spin on your ball, while it's in the air by using the right shoulder button. It worked well for the console Tiger games, and it seems to have been translated quite faithfully.

Really, though, what stunned us the most about this build of Tiger Woods PGA Tour was the fidelity of the presentation. The textures didn't seem quite as sharp, but the golfers themselves still looked and moved quite naturally, to the point that it could easily be mistaken for a PlayStation 2 game. A lot of features you'd expect to be cut from a handheld port of a console game, such as the extensive character-creation system, remained present. You can even expect to hear Gary McCord and David Feherty, the commentary team that has been manning the microphones for EA for years now.

We noticed a few hitches during our time with the game, such as some substantial load times and occasionally choppy frame rates, which we expect will be smoothed out by the time the game is released, but nothing detrimental to the experience. In all, we came away from Tiger Woods PGA Tour rather impressed. It's only 19 days and counting until the US launch of the PSP, and we can't wait to get our hands on the final product.