Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09

Review from Cav, Cav, Cav, Cav, Cav and Cav - Sunday, 28 September 2008 @ 11:26pm

When I bought my original PlayStation in 1997, I bought one game with it: PGA Tour 98. I played the hell out of that game ... until Final Fantasy VII robbed me of my youth ... well my twenties anyway. The following year I couldn’t find a game called PGA Tour 99, title because a gifted young golfer, by the name of Tiger Woods, had be selected to be the face of the franchise. EA Sports latest Golf Title, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09, now means we’ve had ten years of Tiger! But is Eldrick’s (that’s Tiger’s real name, for the Trivia Buffs!) newest offering his best to date? Let’s polish our balls, buff our wedges, get a good grip on our shaft and find out.

Okay, minus 10 points for use of outdated, crude humour to pad out my review.

Cav's Golf Game in real life - Water = Magnet

Firstly, I really have to have a bitch about a sore point in Tiger09 before I tell you about the rest of the game. AJ also hit on this subject in his Tiger Woods 08 review in October last year: the Game Face option. This same technology also exists in EA’s new Boxing title FaceBreaker and AG will be telling you how that pans out in the near future. Game Face gives players the ability to upload pictures of themselves to the EA website, to be used in the creation of a player for in game use. This can also be done via use of the Xbox 360 Vision Camera accessory, which I do not own and do not see why I should have to buy, as I own a perfectly good digital camera and should be able to use the online functionality. Now somehow, by some freakin’ miracle, AJ managed to upload his picture and create a ‘Game Face’ successfully last year. This is where I have failed. As AJ reported, the EA website was branded as a BETA version, which it still is. I couldn’t agree more with my fellow staff member’s sentiments when he stated that “Beta is not a way to excuse yourself from having buggy software!” Now is it the website or the game itself that is buggy? I have successfully uploaded and modified a picture of my gorgeous mug to the website. My Xbox360 can locate that picture on the interwebs and present it to me onscreen, but it is required to be uploaded to my Xbox for modification – that it can’t do. How hard is it? It’s not like I have to add hair to my player now, is it? To be perfectly honest, I have spent three times as much time attempting to upload pics of myself than I have actually playing the game! I have trolled every forum I can locate, trying to find that scrap of information that may just give me the edge on getting this feature to work, but to no avail. I have shrunk, cropped, compressed, enlarged, renamed and edited more than five different sets of photos and attempted to upload them all. I sat there one night for an hour, just repeating the process, over and over again. I must have attempted it more than thirty five times in a row. I have even gone to extent of setting my alarm clock for 3am so I could get up and attempt to upload the picture. Nothing.

I am not fucking impressed in the slightest.

So, why EA? Why? I am not going to contact you, as I can foresee that I am going to get the same answer that you have given hundreds of others who have presented you with the same problem: ‘Everything seems okay, it should work fine’. Maybe for T³ - TigerTwentyTen (Oh yeah, I am talking with EA at the moment about some financial retribution with regards to the next instalments title), trilogy you can do a bundle version with the Xbox Live Vision Camera, for us poor saps who can’t get this to work. Make sure you brand the camera with the EA Logo just so you can squeeze a few more cents out of us. My trolling of the internet has also run across a rumour that EA are releasing a patch to rectify the upload problems that gamers are having. I will keep you posted in the discussion thread for this review, or on the front page if it actually works! So if you can’t get your photo happening, try your hand at recreating yourself. You’d think I’d have a PhD in creating gaming characters, with all my experience in using the ‘Create a Wrestler’ function on the Smackdown! Vs Raw series, but my guy looks like one of the characters from King of the Hill! I don’t really look like that in real life, do I?

By the way readers, if you think you can help me out, drop me a line at cav@australiangamer.com, I will personally come up with a reward for the successful assistance. Maybe an autographed picture of me! Now there’s some incentive!

Okay, enough of that. Now ... Deep breath ... Go to that quiet place ... Goosefrabah ... Goosefrabah ... Okay that I have calmed down, let’s get on to the bits that EA did get right.

Basically, Tiger09 is a solid golf sim, there’s no two ways about it, as there is plenty to do both online and off. There is an improvement on the aesthetics, as the menus, scorecards and all-round graphics are an improvement on last year’s effort. There are plenty of play options to choose from, with your everyday golf games like stroke, match and skins, but not many new options for home based play. Career mode sees you go through a complete PGA Tour season, but I really don't think that I should be able to beat Tiger Woods and Vijay Singh by a clear 25 strokes after four rounds of my first tournament. I know I have been playing golf games for a long time now, but the challenge should be stepped up a little. The Tiger Challenge has changed slightly, but it still travels the same path: beat a set of pros before taking on Tiger. Couldn’t beat Tiger? Well Tiger’s coach Hank Haney is on hand to give you some tips. Come to think of it, they’re not really tips, more like bonus mini-games to add valuable points to your four attributes: Power, Accuracy, Short Game and Putting. Hank’s mug appears at the end of a round to tell you where you screwed up and where to excel, giving you the opportunity partake in these exercises to up these stats. These can also be bolstered by buying clubs and clothing, as per previous editions of the game. On that subject, do you know that you can shop at the Pro Shop using Microsoft Points? How’s that, eh? You can use your points, which actually have some real monetary value, to boost your stats in a video game? To those that did do this: That money would have been better saved and spent at a brothel, because my guess is that you have never been laid. For those who need to tailor their clubs to gain those extra meters from their drive, the new Club Tuner option can get you further. Is this cheating? Does this take away from the attempted realism? I suppose if I had the cash to spend on a profesional coach, I would look to achieve that little bit extra. So now you have your player made and your clothes and clubs are set, let’s get online and take on the world!

Hank Haney auditions for Deal or No Deal

Taking Tiger 09 online has its pros and cons. Playing against others across the planet, seems pretty smooth, as I have only had 3 out of around 50 online games drop out, so not a bad ratio, although, when it says the servers are trying to match your opponent, I feel it fails because abilities certainly aren’t matched when you end up playing against someone who can drive the green on a majority of Par 4’s on a course. I would also really like to work out how to form a party so a friend and I can go out as a pair and play against others. If that is possible, there are no clear instructions on the process anywhere. There are some people out there who have obviously playing this way too long and have earned some freaky golf attire like Elvis costumes, Space Suits and Pink Bunny Suits. No, not the Playboy type, but one that looks as though it has never been laundered and is held together with white Gaffer Tape

Personally I love GamerNet. The ability to make a great shot, then post it online for the gaming community to challenge, is an awesome concept; EA has this working really well. I have had some challenges up for over a week that haven’t been beaten which is really satisfying. In my opinion, the greatest thing to surface in Tiger 09 online is Simultaneous Play, where you can play online against up to three others without the wait. All players will play at the same time, with your opponent’s shots appearing in your screen as a coloured line. Of course you have a setting that limits the time taken to complete your shot to thirty seconds, which stops people walking away from the game to go down the street and grab a Big Mac from Mickey D’s, just like when you put the phone down when Chandervindupaul rings you to try and convert you from your current electricity provider, offering you a discount on your next bill.

MAJOR EDIT: I have been writing this review on and off for over a week. While searching through the EA website for photos to add to my review, I noticed reports that the patch I mentioned earlier was released on the 26th of September. So I throw the Xbox 360 on and start Tiger 09 up. Low and behold there it was. The patch loaded really quickly, and I hit the My Golfer tab. Uploading a Photo to the Game Face option used to cease after and average of eight seconds, but his one succeeded after about 20 seconds. Creation after upload took arond 30 to 45 seconds. Below is the result. I am happy with the way the picture turned out, but I will not retract my iniitial disappointment with the Game Face option, as it shouldn't happen that way in the first place.

Now Showing: Coneheads 2 - Coneheads Hit The Links

Pros

GamerNet, taking on the world! Simulaneous Play. The abilty to buy attributes with MS Points ... if you are that way inclined. Both Analogue Stick and '3-Click' method swinging available, just like last year.

Cons

Game Face. Skills Matching Online. Game Face. The New Commentators - Monotone is an understatement. Can I spend my MS Points on a personality for them? Bring back last year's guys! ... oh and GAME FACE!!!!! EDIT: C'mon EA, it's called 'getting it right the first time' and if you count Tiger 08, you've had two 'first times'.