He's been on Wheaties boxes, in Nike commercials, and he's even the star of a few of EA Sports' golf games. But even Tiger Woods himself can't save Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2000 from being a game so bland that even the most immobile of golf fans will rather dust off their spiked shoes than settle with this year's offering.
If there's one redeeming quality resting inside Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2000, it's the sheer amount of stuff packed into the game. The game is divided into two play lengths - single and tour. The tour mode lets you select your golfer, and then you're off to five courses in a huge tournament. The single game is more appropriate for gamers not willing to set aside an entire day for the tour mode, and it lets you select one of eight variations on the classic golf game, from four ball to skins. Once you select how you actually want to play, you'll get to choose from one of five different PGA pro golfers, including Tiger Woods himself. If that isn't good enough for you, you can opt to create a golfer, but you won't actually be able to customize anything other than his name and what clubs he carries. Then it's off to one of the five actual PGA courses found in the game to battle it out.
The graphics in Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2000 are pretty horrible. While a step in the right direction from last year's game, they still look as out of context as ever. The digitized golfers stand out like cardboard cutouts in front of polygonal backgrounds with flat trees and one-sided shrubbery. The swing and celebration animations are well done, but they take awhile to load and get annoying after a while. The frame rate is simply terrible while the ball is moving. The background hops toward you in an extremely choppy manner while you're watching your ball sail toward the green. The game also features a "read green" button that, when pressed, moves the background in a certain direction to let you more easily read the geography of the green. This effect looks extremely bad, and it fools innocent bystanders into thinking there has suddenly been an earthquake in the middle of your golf game.Unlike last year's game, there isn't a whole lot of sound in Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2000. Gone are the horrible guitar riffs and rocking music - they've been replaced by silence. If you make a decent shot, the crowd will applaud and murmur approvingly, expressing fascination with your ability to move the ball anywhere near the hole. Occasionally, your golfer will pipe up with some ridiculous bit of speech with phrases like, "Sit down! Sit!" or "I've been here before!" But either EA only recorded Woods himself, or all the golfers in the game have amazingly similar voices, as each golfer sounds exactly like the next. Just as in last year's game, you're still better off playing Tiger Woods PGA Tour with some of your own musical selections replacing the game's sound.
Where Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2000 provides a little innovation is in the game's creative use of the PlayStation's analog control. Now, instead of the tired hit-the-bar-at-the-top-and-bottom meter that has been in almost every golf game since the dawn of time, you can opt to use a handy new method. Pull back and hold the analog control to control the power of your swing, and then push it forward, left, or right to dictate the control of the swing. This new method is a lot more conducive to controlling your golf swing, and it is a nice replacement to the old method. And for players who can't hang with the analog control, you can disable it and opt for the good old meter. Just like last year's game, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2000 features an automatic club selection that helps players who aren't comfortable selecting clubs on their own. There's also plenty of information available to you in the various displays that overlay the actual course.
It's a toss-up whether Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2000 is better than Tiger Woods PGA Tour 99. There have been some minor tweaks, but in the end 2000 still suffers from terrible graphics and laughable sound. Fairly accurate gameplay and an innovative new control scheme save Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2000 from being a complete loss, but it's in no way a game you'll find yourself wanting to play for prolonged amounts of time. Casual fans of the arcade-style golfing game should keep well away, and even those looking for an accurate simulation should be cautious around this one.
