Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08

Review from AJ - Monday, 22 October 2007 @ 10:38pm

Welcome to the 10th iteration of Tiger Woods PGA Tour and the third for the 360. After losing their way for a couple of years, EA Sports have finally gotten around to releasing a game that feels on par (pun intended) with last generation’s versions of the game. With 17 courses (5 more than last year and 11 more than in 2006), 21 Pros, and a couple of new game modes, Tiger Woods 08 for the 360 finally feels like a full priced game. Now, I must stress that this is a review of the 360 version of the game, and all comparisons to previous versions are to previous Xbox 360 or Xbox versions. Why is this important? Because, for the past 2 years Xbox 360 owners have been getting royally screwed over.

2005 was a good year for Tiger Woods. The Xbox version of the game introduced nifty features like “Tiger Vision” which allowed for a very handy putt preview that showed you a line representing the path of the ball (thus giving you a chance to correct your aim), “Tiger Proofing” which allowed for customization of every course in the game and Game Face 2 which allowed for some pretty amazing character creation. On top of that, the game had 14 courses, 2500 Pro-shop items, introduced 15 Pro players and had a really solid online experience. Of course the following year, if you picked up 06 for the 360, you would’ve felt the real sting of these “annual upgrades”. Not only would you have paid 50% more than the Xbox version, but instead of 15 courses you got only 6 and the following year while everyone else was playing 21 courses, 360 users only had 12; still 2 less than Tiger Woods 05. Only now do 360 users finally get the same number of courses as everyone else. The EA Sports Xbox 360 development team should be slapped for being so damned lazy.




So what the hell has been happening? If you’ve bought every version on the 360, you would’ve spent around $300 on new golf games and right now only have 2 more courses to play than you did 3 years ago. Worse than that is the fact that the game as a whole today is only just getting back to what the game was in 2005. If ever there was an example of how game companies push out the same crap each year, Tiger Woods is it. This Tiger Woods isn’t a new game, it’s an expansion pack. I simply can’t imagine any other game getting away with this kind of thing. It’d be like Valve releasing a new version of Half Life which just adds a couple of extra hours to the existing game, or Project Gotham getting a new version with all the same tracks but with a couple of new locations…. Oh wait, hang on. The problem here is that you used to buy a game like Half Life at full price, and then buy expansion packs at about half the price for new content that expanded on what you already own. It seems that is well and truly out the window as publishers have worked out that there is no need to build a new game when you can just tack on some extra content and resell the same game at full price. It’s enough to make me want to line up the entire industry and slap them all one at a time.

What I get really annoyed about is when EA do something like introduce a “new” feature like the new “putt preview” in Tiger Woods 08 which allows for a very handy putt preview that shows you a line representing the path of the ball (thus giving you a chance to correct your aim). WTF?? You added this in 2005 you fools… and it was better back then! Whilst in 2005, Tiger Vision could only be used a certain number of times per game, meaning you had to conserve it for when you had a truly nasty putt. Now you can use it for every single putt for every hole for every game. Even better is the “new” 3-click system. Click to start the swing, click to end your backswing, click to end your shot. Now, I don’t care if you prefer this or not, adding this as a “new feature” makes me want to vomit. It worked well with the space bar on my 286 playing “Mean 18”, but given that EA practically invented the analog swing, this is just ridiculous. We’ve truly reached the end of innovation in gaming. It reminds me of KFC… or Kentucky Fried Chicken for the older set. KFC (I believe) have a rather unique way of putting up prices. Every couple of years they introduce a new range of burgers, usually with BBQ sauce or Tomato or something else new. The put up the price for this new burger and advertise it as their “new KFC fillet burger range”. Then after six months, they advertise the “return of the original fillet burger” with the same new inflated price only to bring out the “new KFC fillet burger range” again in a couple of years time. Adding something, removing it, and then putting it back in does NOT make it new assholes! The EA marketing geniuses get a slapping for this one.




Of course, there are some actual new features in Tiger Woods 08….. well, new to Tiger Woods at least because we’ve already seen it in games like Rainbow Six Vegas and even a few crappy Eye Toy games on the PS2. Game Face is basically a way of getting your ugly mug onto your character in the game, and in this case, the results are pretty good. It is pretty cool I’d have to say, even if the implementation SUCKS. I’m not sure if a game review can be affected by the quality of the game’s website, but in this case it certainly is. You have two choices when you’re uploading a photo to the game. Usually the only choice you’d have is to use the 360 camera to take a picture for the game, but EA have gone the extra step and allowed the rest of us to upload a photo via the website. It all sounds good in theory, except the EA Sports website is APPALLING. Let’s just ignore the fact that site is in BETA (by the way, a note for developers… if it is being used by your customers, it is NOT in Beta. Beta is not a way to excuse yourself from having buggy software!). The trouble starts with this site when you realize that you are a member, but you never actually signed up. Yes, if you’ve played an EA game online, you already gave them all your information. Of course, the fact that you need to login, and don’t know what your username and password is, and that there is no “forgot password” link doesn’t really help. Even if you do manage to login, your account probably isn’t linked to your Gamertag correctly anyway, because that has all been very buggy (especially if you signed up oline previously with EA). Once you jump through all the hoops, you will eventually be able to upload your photo… except that for me, it took about 5 days worth of trying a dozen times each night to get a photo uploaded. By this time, I was already well and truly over the idea and wouldn’t have even bothered if it weren’t for the fact that I needed to review the game. For this feature, it is the EA web-team that gets a slapping.

While we’re on the topic of the interwebs, EA have done a pretty good job with their Gamernet initiative across their games. This allows you to upload videos, photos, replays and challenges to the internet for others to have a look at. Tiger Woods implements a new feature called Gamernet challenges, where after a good round, or a good shot, you upload a challenge to Gamernet posting certain requirements to beat the challenge. This could be anything from “in the hole”, to “distance from pin” or “bounce in area” to “number of path bounces” or “number of spectators hit”. Unfortunately, the testers mustn’t have tested this real well, because the Gamernet challenges are overwhelmed by people posting challenges involving hitting spectators 32 times with 600 path bounces, which are only possible due to glitchy ball behavior over bridges and the like, making it all but impossible to achieve the challenges with anything other than trial and error. Because of these challenges over running the Gamernet (and offering ridiculously high point values), the genuine challenges fall way down the list and offer comparatively low rewards for hitting 350 yard drives that land in the hole…something pretty close to impossible to do intentionally. In the end, the whole thing falls in a heap for anything other than uploading your challenge with the expectation that no one will ever actually bother doing it.




On the upside, Tiger Woods 08 gets ONE new Mini game mode. Bingo-Bango-Bongo. Or is it Bango-Bongo-Bingo…. One or the other. This is a game mode where 3 points are given away per hole. One point is given for the first on the green, one for closest to the pin, and one for lowest score for the hole. Unfortunately, it can be a really annoying game mode, especially against some of the harder AI. Who hits first is a big factor in who will eventually win, especially on a par 3 when the first player will invariably get Bingo for first on the green. Strategy becomes a little more important on a par 4, where the person furthest from the pin after the drive will always be first one the green (because they have their second shot first), leaving the second player having to “lay up” short of the green to ensure an easy chip to win closest to the pin. Of course, this means that the other player will most likely win Bongo because they’ve taken a shot less to get there. With Par 5’s which take 3 shots to get to the pin, the first player gets the advantage again, because they will get control of the 2nd or 3rd shot forcing the other player to make a long shot at the green. The result of all this is that it becomes somewhat random as to who wins in the end, unless someone stuffs up a shot completely which, if you’re up against Tiger Woods, is going to be you.

Of course, Tiger Challenge and the Pro Tour series is where most of the action is and this part of the game is largely unchanged from previous games. I’m not sure if it was my new 360 controller, but I found the analog controls a little overly sensitive this time around. Of course, that may be due to the one and only genuinely new feature in Tiger Woods 08, “Shot confidence”. Traditionally, the only thing to affect your shot quality was your player’s skill. Now, your history on a particular hole will greatly affect how well you play it in the future. Over time, gaining experience on a hole will allow you to play it more accurately. Of course, if you’re like me, you will also find yourself collecting “bogey” holes. Certain holes like the 18th at Pebble Beach, just stuff me up every time… and as a result, my confidence (measured by a larger or smaller aiming circle) is greatly reduced. Add in the stats that are taken with each club, and you will find yourself, over time, with a very good indicator of how well you play. The best thing about this is that it is cumulative, meaning that long term performance is weighed more heavily than one bad day.

So all in all, Tiger Woods 08 is not a bad game. It’s just that it suffers from the once-a-year release schedule that dogs many similar titles, and is only worsened by the fact that there are no other golf games to compete with. EA simply cannot justify releasing a game like this every year, with so few changes and especially when the changes that ARE implemented are unusable or plain broken. Yes, Game Face rocks, yes I like the new Fade/Draw system, yes, Tiger Challenge is still fun and yes I still like playing golf games. The problem is that Tiger Woods 08 is still not as good as Tiger Woods 2005 and only just makes up for the last 2 appalling Xbox 360 releases. Tiger Woods isn’t bad, it just isn’t 10 iterations better than the first one, and when you’re paying $110 for a game these days, it bloody well should be. What is greatly needed is for Tiger to get some competition. Just like how Tony Hawk is old and tired and has been given a much needed shake up from EA Skate (ironically), Tiger Woods is an old franchise which has quite simply failed over time to deliver consistently high quality iterations. From website and registration issues, to serious graphical glitches and game crashes, this game behaves more like a “first release” than the 10th iteration. And for god’s sake, would it kill them to get some new commentators?

Pros

At last, a reasonable number of courses! Still the same good game play we expect from TW. Game face is cool. Being crap for two years, makes this look good by comparison.

Cons

Still no improvement over TW2005. Glitchy graphics, buggy game. The web issues hurt the overall package. Not enough new content to justify the price.

Summary

Tiger Woods 08 is still a great golf game and is certainly better than the last 2 on the 360. But that doesn’t excuse it from being part the annual release cycle. There is no need for an annual release of Tiger Woods, and EA are clearly struggling to come up with a compelling reason to buy each new iteration. 08 doesn’t bring enough to the table to justify its own release, and what it does bring is far more buggy than it should be for its age.