Tiger Woods 09 offers up a pretty good game of golf.
And I'm probably not going too. I don't really play Tiger Woods, I just find it relaxing somehow.
Even though I suck at it. So I'm going to talk about the game a little bit, I'll attach a score at the end and you can read into it whatever you like. Or don't.
The first thing I did upon loading up the game was create my character, except I didn't really.
I let the Xbox Live Vision camera do it for me.
I bought one the other day with this game for pretty much that sole purpose: to exploit this feature and use it in other games that have a similar feature, like Rainbow Six: Vegas for example.
So it asked to take a picture of me for the front and optionally one from the side for greater accuracy. So I did that. It took about 15-20 minutes to process it, so it can be quite a wait.
If you just wanted to get into the game you can just use a generic dude or quickly make your own guy, but I wanted to play as me.
To begin with I didn't really think it looked a lot like me.
The limited hair styles you can choose from don't help.
My hair is long long. A bit below my shoulders long. I don't even think theres just shoulder length hair for guys. The options are all fairly conservative. All different variations on short hair.
Kind of limiting, but what can you do?
You start out with a bit of money to buy clothes and accessories, including improvements for your clubs like better grips and shafts. Hehe. Shaft. Some of these are purely cosmetic changes, others can have an impact on your game by improving one of your four stats.
These are power, which as far as I can gather mostly impacts your drive.
Accuracy, which seems self explanatory.
Short game, how well you hit the ball less then 100 meters from the pin? Something like that.
And putting. Also self explanatory.
The other way to improve your stats is to simply play the game, which makes sense.
But when you play as crappily as I do you'll occasionally wish for a more traditional XP based system wherein you keep whatever skill you earn. As is it's constantly fluctuating.
Play good and you'll keep solid stats. Play crap and you'll be less solid.
I have my good rounds, but mostly I'm not great. So my stats are up and down like a roller coaster. It rewards consistency, but it can be difficult to keep up the pace.
I'm generally pretty solid but if the wind picks up more then a mild breeze then it screws up my game, I'm generally pretty shoddy at estimating where I should aim and how far in that direction I should aim to make up for the fact that the winds blowing like friggin' mad.
Playing the game hasn't changed much from the 06 edition, that being the last golf game I've played. The left stick is pretty much your club. You pull back to swing. How fast and whatnot impacts how hard. What direction you wind up pushing the stick in when you go to whack the ball can impact which direction you hit the ball somewhat. It took me a while to figure that out, so when I wasn't hitting as straight as I would like and the wind was non-existent I would sit there wandering what the hell was going on. But it was me.
I don't think this was in the 06 edition, but now you can press in the right stick and opt for the old fashion "3 click" system most old golf games used before people thought to use sticks and wii remotes and other new fangled technology. Once to start up the bars charge, once for the shots power, once for accuracy and off it goes. If you haven't played a golf game in a while and you don't care to learn the stick, then they've got you covered which is nice.
My main complaint would be the commentators, who I am pondering muting.
I'm sure they're fine if you play well, but because my skill is all over the place well I get a lot of "Well that's a terrible shot" "I bet he wish he could take that one back" "Grab your beach towel, it's heading for the sand." "Looks like it's heading straight for the rough". I get this ALOT.
I get it so much that when they DO say something good I get the nagging feeling they mean it sarcastically and the tone they use when they say pretty much EVERYTHING comes off as sarcastic.
Anyhoo, I'll stop rambling.
I'm not a sports person in the slightest, perhaps especially when it comes to golf.
But theres something relaxing about it. Pretty much since my own 360 died I've been on my bros, playing golf with some good music in the background. It's all very zen and such.
I recommend even if you generally don't like sports or sports games, at least giving it a rental.
Or pick up last years edition for real cheap seeing as how it was probably more or less exactly the same.