Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 First Hands-On
While Tiger attacks Torrey Pines, we take on EA Sports' upcoming golf game.
SAN DIEGO--Although the world ran out of superlatives long ago to describe Tiger Woods' talent on the golf course, you can still sit and watch, mouth agape, as he continues to rewrite the history books with each major outing. You need look no further than the third round of the 2008 U.S. Open for proof of that; playing on a surgically repaired knee that was clearly bothering him, Tiger managed to counterbalance his inaccurate drivers with some amazing recovery shots, phenomenal putting, and, as evidenced by that miraculous chip-in on 17, not a little luck. The only way that most of us will get anywhere near that kind of performance is in a video game. While in San Diego to check out some U.S. Open action, we also had a chance to see and play the most recent build of EA Sports' latest golf game, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09, a game that aims to help you become the best virtual duffer you can be.
Amid all the new features in Tiger 09, perhaps the most visible addition is that of Hank Haney, who serves as Woods' real-life golf coach and, in Tiger 09, your mentor in the game (read about our time with Hank on the GameSpot Sports Blog). When you first fire up the game, Haney will be there to assess your skills in four crucial aspects: power, accuracy, short game, and putting. Playing through each of the four sets of minigames is similar to the challenges in previous Tiger games but, at the end of your skills evaluation, you'll be given a numerical assessment of each of your four skills. Thanks to the dynamic attributes in Tiger 09 (which replace last year's confidence system), it won't be long before those baseline attribute scores start quickly going up. You can achieve a maximum score of 10 for each rating, which can be boosted a further two points depending on the kind of gear that your golfer's using.
Naturally, the easiest way to get a big boost is to play a full round of golf. We set off for 18 at TPC at Sawgrass and fell right into the swing of things. From a control standpoint, the game doesn't feel like a big departure from previous entries in the series. On the default difficulty level, the right stick's swing feels as good as ever, but a new meter in the lower left-hand side of the screen will trace the exact path that your stick takes from the backswing all the way to the follow-through. In our case, we noticed a consistent tendency to start our backswing a little bit left of center; that type of factor didn't affect our ball striking on the default difficulty level, but it might be a problem once you bump things up a notch or two.
During our time with the game, we ran through Sawgrass, played a bit at the new Shanghai course, Sheshan, checked out 18 at Pebble Beache (complete with new roaring-wave effects that crash onto the shore), and also played nine holes at our favorite new course, the gorgeous and immensely challenging Wolf Creek. After playing full rounds, you'll get the chance to revisit some of your "special" moments on the course with Hank Haney, such as the long drive that we dunked in the sand on 14 at Sheshan, or that shot out of the rough that we managed to land in the drink at Wolf Creek. You'll get a chance to revisit an errant shot and then try to figure out what you did wrong and (more importantly) how to correct it with instant challenges.
In the case of the bad drive at Sheshan, Hank set up a power challenge for us, with the goal being to hit the ball into a circle near where we should have been aiming in the first place. We passed that challenge on the first try, which offered us a small boost to our power attribute. We were also offered a bonus-round challenge, which asked us to repeat that same shot as many times as we could in 60 seconds. For each successful attempt, we'd earn a tiny attribute boost and more time would be added to the clock. After our initial success, we managed to pull a big fat zero in the bonus round. Luckily we weren't penalized for melting down; bonus rounds are there strictly to reward the player.
After a round, the game (and Hank) will present a set of challenges to you, and you can choose to play them immediately or put them off until later. If you choose to try them later, the most recent challenges will be saved in the Tiger Challenge menu, which you can access at any time. The game will always present to you challenges in each of the four attribute categories--power, accuracy, short game, and putting--so you'll always have the ability to at least attempt improving your standing. It should be noted that, though you have plenty of opportunities for improving your attributes in Tiger 09, the dynamic-attribute system in the game also means that your skills can drop if you have a particularly bad outing. You might notice some big drops in the early goings of the game, as you gain experience on the various courses, but any performance blips won't affect your overall skills that much.
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- GameSpot Score8.0great
Check Prices: $19.99 – 24.99
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Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 09 Review
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- Electronic Arts
- EA Tiburon
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- Release: Aug 26, 2008 »
- ESRB: Everyone
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