TW '09 is a great game for the Wii only owners, or people not as picky as me.
The Wii edition of this game has a lot going for it. The Wii controls work very well overall but the few occasions they don't work will always be at the wrong time.
The controls consist of 'standing righty', 'standing lefty', and nunchuck. Each of these modes have some differences based on the difficulty settings of 'All Play', 'Standard', and 'Advanced'. For basics, the standing modes allow you to swing the remote like Wii Sport Golf and work great for the most part. To swing you aim the remote down, hold B, begin the back swing and then swing forward like a real club. The nunchuck mode takes the swinging mechanic and maps it to the nunchuck analog.
Putting is a whole different experience though. The swing starts the same, but you have a 90 degree back swing which equals 100% power. To make it easier to fine tweak the power you want, the distance you put is dynamic at 5 ft, 10 ft, 20 ft, 40 ft, and 60 ft (there might be a further one, but I never had to experience it as I landed on the greens always better than 60 ft away). So when you are at 3 ft away from the cup, you will need to swing at 60% power at least. That means you have to pull your club back to a 60 degree angle to do a 3 ft put. Now, at a 12 ft away put guess what? you do the exact same swing.
This is EA making the best of a bad situation. Really in Wii Sports Golf when you had a small put you had to try hard to get it to recognize just a tap. EA makes this easier to do and with precision, but at the expense of all realism. It's too bad the motion controls can't detect more precise movements.
To make sure you get some remote shaking in the game, to put spin on the ball, while it is in the air you can hold a d-pad direction and then shake the remote. The more you shake it, the more spin in that particular direction. To aim your shots the 'A' button will zoom to the target location (double tapping A gets rid of the slow zoom camera effect which is a good touch). Button 1 will switch the type of the shot you are taking (punch, loft, chip, etc).
So I could get a good sense of how the game works in the long run, I played a round or two with different golfers, and created my own in career mode (more on that in a minute). Tiger basically has all his stats set to 100%, so if you wanted precision golfing with the controls this is what they are going to feel like. Using my own golfer, which stats hover around 50% at the start, made things a little bit harder.
To practice the swing mechanic and also adjust your clubs to your natural swinging deficiencies there is a 'club tuner' mode which is basically a driving range where you can also tweak each setting of your club. For those that don't like to tweak everything manually, you can swing a few shots and then have 'Hank' fix them for you so you always get a nice straight shot (usually at the expense of power and what not).
Now for modes. You can play a quick round of golf, front 9, back 9, numerous different courses; You can start a career in career mode; You have some minigames that play out as longest tee shot. Included in these are a mini-putt, target shooting, and such. There is also an all-play mode which is similar to the mini-game mode only now each person can battle out using tokens that are earned during the game and what not.
Career most is the part that interested me the most and it is very fleshed out. You create a character from scratch, apply attributes you win and are given during play can customize pretty much every aspect of your character model and what they wear. It also lets you pick Tournament lengths (so if you want a smaller season you can have it). After each Tournament 'Hank' will pick a shot for you to practice to earn more bonus points for stats and confidence. It's actually pretty awesome the amount of stuff you can do with career mode.
I didn't spend a lot of time with the online modes, I will admit. So if you are really interested in the online modes you will have to look at a few more reviews that focus more on that. I won't try to lie my way through it. So I won't factor it in positively or negatively to the score.
There are some other parts of the game that were interesting and worth noting. I really liked how when I had a really big clutch shot a heart beating sound would start pumping out of the game. It put pressure on you to perform the shot well, above and beyond just knowing how important the shot was. It was a nice touch.
So, now we come to a head, and these are where the opinions really start and where I will justify why I gave the score and why people can and probably should have the right to disagree.
1. Controls. While motion controls were awesome when I first played the Wii, unfortunately they still suffer from, 'THAT'S NOT WHAT I DID!!!' syndrome. And with a golf game where you are trying to be perfect all of the time, this can be very frustrating. The first time you are -7 going into the last two holes or so and you swing like you have the last 16 tee shots and instead it only registers 50% and goes right into the water you WILL curse the controls. So, in short, it's just like real golf... that's a positive or negative depending on how you look at it. For me, precision is everything so this is a big negative. When I push a button I expect it to work. The Wii controls WILL fail you at least once per round if not more. Hope you don't mind.
Still on the controls. Where is the visual feedback of how you swing? There are no indicators of how you pulled back the remote and forward. All you get is an after the event picture of what the game thought you did. Really, is there no way they could map your back swing to your front swing and show it to you? instead you get a arrow and % of hit for each swing. No feedback on how to improve at all. I think this is by design because of the first complaint I mentioned with the controls. If a shot blows up on you and you had a visual guide that shows the game read the motion controls wrong it would really show that the game didn't do what you asked for. Solution? no visual feedback. This is really where the game FAILs when it comes to controls.
Again though, when you are out golfing in real life do you have anyone recording your shot so you can improve? Probably not, so it is realistic, but to me that just isn't allowed in a video game.
Also, where are the 3-click controls for precision shots if I really wanted to use it? This feature would have saved the game for me. I could use motion controls for the games I wasn't worried too much about and switched to an extremely precise control scheme when I wanted to play extremely focused on perfection. But sorry, no 3-click controls are anywhere in this game.
Lastly, back to putting. I mentioned how they are trying to make a bad situation out of the Wiimote sensitivity above, but for a keen gamer it won't take long to notice that putting is even more broken. Putting is basically reading what angle you start your remote downswing at and then locking in that power. So really you can put by clicking the 'B' button while pointing the remote straight down, then angle the remote to exactly where you want it % wise, then do a quick jerk back down and it will always give you exactly the power you wanted. Sorry, but that is broken and not nearly as realistic as you had hoped from 'motion controls'.
2. Sound. TW 09 golf has a sound track that plays in the menus, but that is it. This really hurts the game. The only thing you are going to hear the whole game is the few people that cheer on your shots (but are not rendered anywhere on the course) and the two very boring announcers. This game might as well be a silent game. Prepare to turn off the announces and provide your own music to the game. This should not be allowed in a game of today's day and age.
3. Compared to the X360 game, this edition is the lightweight game. I won't bother reviewing the X360 edition alongside this one other than to say, the analog stick of the X360 edition simulates a golf swing much better, with visual feedback and tuning, than this game as a whole. The other versions also have precision 3-click shooting when you want it with a quick RS click, better graphics (duh) to the point that you can peg people alongside the fairway (always makes a bad shot entertaining!), and how the stat system works just feels better.
Am I comparing this to the X360 and PS3 offering? Yes. I'll be blunt. I won't hide it. The Wii edition did get a lower score based on the fact the same titled game is available on a different system.
BUT, TW '09 is a pretty impressive game Wii speaking. If you don't mind a few precision problems here or there, or the fact you get no visible feedback when something bad (or good) happens, you can add +2 to my score. Also if you don't own any other console system you can bump this up another score point or more. That means I'm really giving this game a 9.0 if the above criteria fits what you want out of it. But for me, as the reviewer, I feel I can't give it more than a 6.0. Hopefully I explained sufficiently why.
Now remember that question below the review says 'Was this helpful? Yes / No' not do you agree or disagree. I hope I helped those that were fence sitting to either to go buy it, get a different version, or pass on the game. Feedback always welcomed.
Thanks for reading.