Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2008

Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: Tiburon
Genre: Sports
Release: August 28, 2007
Platforms: Playstation 2, Playstation 3, Playstation Portable, Xbox 360, Nintendo DS, Wii, PC

Reviewer: Dan

I haven't bought a version of Tiger Woods PGA Tour since the 2005 release. That was the year I made the decision, along with a college roommate, to buy every single EA Sports game made for that year. I was pretty happy Tiger Woods was one of the games I had to buy. It was a challenge at first to learn how to play the game, then to try creating a character from scratch with absolutely no skill. But after awhile, I got good enough at the game to be able to dominate a tournament with any character, no matter how low their stats were.

So when it became too easy, I sort of stopped at that one and didn't get '06 or '07. But recently, I decided to give the series another try, and I think I'm rather happy I decided to do so. Being a fan of the simulation aspect of sports video games, I decided to do the "Create A Characer" thing and put my self into the game, literally. The Photo Gameface feature allows you to upload front and side photos of your face to the game. The game then is able to render a 3-D image of your head. The game says it is easy to do this. Yes, it is easy to put two pictures of yourself on a website so the game can download it. However, it isn't exactly easy to get your head looking good. After a few moments of trial and error, I figured out that to get the best head, you need to take your picture in lower light settings than you would normally think and you should keep your eyes closed druing the picture. I do realize that the example does show a picture of a person with their eyes open, but every time I had the game render my head, it gave me freakish eyelids that made it look like I never closed my eyes. I say low light because a few times it wasn't able to adjust the adjust the color of my skin properly so it ended up looking like I had passed out in the sun all day with one side of my face getting burned and the other, not so much.

Now that you know how to put your head in the game, I guess you probably want to know what the gameplay is like. Well, if you've played a Tiger Woods game before, then you know how it is; very realistic as in it can be very frustrating at first, but with practice, you actually get better. Much like real golf, this version of Tiger Woods makes your character bad at golf at first. Very Bad. Worse than Charles Barkley. I think I shot a +72 in the first tournament I tried with my new character. I know it is discouraging being that bad, but I suggest you keep trying. Every time you do something well on a shot, it increases your stats slightly. It's a lot like leveling in an RPG. But your stats can only go up so far without raising your potential. You can increase your stats to a certain point, but everything you add afterwards is "unrealized potential." To "realize" your potential, you have to play in the Tiger Challenges to unlock your potential. These are a bunch of mini-games that lead to a challenge of one of the pros in the game at the end of each group. Beat that pro, and your potential and stats go up.

The second tournament I played, my character did much better. Good enough for second place. You can really tell that your character is getting better in the game. The higher stats you have, the less perfect you have to be with the movement of th controls. As a comparison, I would frequently either slice or hook my shots and very rarely hit the ball perfect with my low-stat guy. When I played with Tiger, I rarely hit a slice or a hook unless I really screwed up the motions on the controller. Speaking of the control, there are now two options on how you can swing the club. You can either use the left analog stick by pulling it back for the backswing and pusing it forward for the followthrough. You can now use the "Three Click Swing" which brings up a timing bar. Hit X to start it, X to stop on the desired power, and X again to stop on the accuracy. If you've played any of the older Maddens (pre 2006), then you will be familiar with this.

There is a neat little online feature that this game has. After an amazing shot, you can actually upload the shot to the "GamerNet" and let other people try to duplicate the shot. Although at this point, a lot of them are just hole-in-ones and none of them are really very creative.

Final Verdict

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2008 is a pretty good game. I find that a lot of people, not just fans of golf can enjoy this game. True, it can be nearly impossible and very frustrating if you create a character, but with a little time at the driving range (literally), your character will soon no longer be a legitimate excuse for your horrible short game. Now I can't really comment on how this compares to last years, but it does apparently add a few new enjoyable features that are sure to keep the EA Sports Kool-Aid drinkers (like myself) buying the game. I give Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2008 8.25 out of 10.