Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2003

"Tiger revolutionizes video game golfing"

I've been waiting all my life to gain the ability to play golf as a sumo wrestler. Well now my dream has come true! Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2003 allows you to play as a wide variety of characters, ranging from the pros we all know and love (or hate, if that's your fancy) to the original characters the game offers. These characters include hot babes, kilt-baring ogres, sumo wrestlers, and mob bosses.

Sure, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2003 is quirky, but how does it stand up overall?

Control: 10/10

Don't you love the old golf games where you time three button presses in order to make a shot? Yeah, me neither. But TWPT2K3 completely takes that whole system and tosses it into a bunker. The new innovative control design makes the game of golf fun again. To swing, you don't even press any buttons. You hold down on the control stick hor a desired amount of time (backswing) and then you proceed to hold up on the control stick (followthrough) to complete the swing. The beauty of this system is that it feels a lot like you are actually playing golf. In the real game of golf, you don't just focus on three parts of your swing and time them correctly to hit the perfect drive; you concentrate throughout the swing, and if you hesitate or screw up somewhere in the middle, you're not going to hit a good shot. It's exactly the same in this game. If you hold your backswing to long, you're not going to hit a good shot. If you move the control stick to the left or right, you're going to slice/hook the ball. If your overall timing is off, you better bring some scuba gear. The feel for this game is fantastic.
Another great feature included in the control is the use of the Z-Button. In this game, once you complete your swing, it's not like you just watch the ball go where it goes and hope for the best; you can control the spin of the ball mid-flight. So if you're on a Par 3 and you hit your shot a bit too left, don't sweat it. With Z, you can still ace the shot, that is if you use it correctly. The Z-button also acts as a power booster. The more you press the button in your backswing, the farther your ball will go. This feature is great if you're torn between hitting a solid PW or your soft 9I. I prefer the solid PW because, you know, pressing buttons is fun.

Sound: 6/10

My one complaint about this game is that the sound often seems out of place or screwy in this game. First off, the soundtrack for this game is full of Heavy Metal music. When I think of the game of golf, I don't think "ALL RIGHT! ROCK ON!" waving my Zippo in the air. I'm not suggesting that this game have a background of classical music playing while I scroll through the menus, I'm just saying Come on? A band called Saliva? I'll pass.
The announcers can also be annoying. Sometimes they're humorous (one guy seems to disappear in the middle of your round sometimes). Other times, they can be very critical. Your ball lands in the rough? You're a horrible golfer and you should know it. Your ball touches a tree? Your ball is basically in the woods and they'll make fun of you (the ball actually landed in the middle of the fairway).
Another annoying thing about the sound is the audience. They cheer at very inappropriate time. They whine if your 350 yard drive grazes the rough, and sometimes they will even provoke you not to alter the spin of your ball when they cheer, because you think that you hit a really good shot, when in fact it lands 15 feet from the pin on a chip shot. Yeah, well I boo you guys too.
The gameplay sound otherwise is alright. When you hit the ball, it makes a noise, which I assume is a good thing? Lets move on.

Graphics: 9/10

I won't say much about the graphics, except that they are nearly flawless. I won't bother going into the phenomenal polygon rate cortexes, video gamma projection capabilities, or any of that crap. My only complaint is that they took Mark Calcavecchia, a fairly handsome man in real life, and made him look he fell down an ugly tree, hit every branch on the way down, land face first, got hit by a truck, had a bum poop on his face, and then he proceeded to play golf.

Gameplay: 9/10

The gameplay is great. all the holes are exact replicas of their real-life cousins. If the game is too hard for you, you can place the pins on a flat part of the green and play off the white tees. If the game is too easy, you can place the pin on a slope and play off the black tees.
The range of different types of games you can play are incredible. You can play the Tiger Challenge (basically career mode), Scenario Challenges (you're given a scenario, such as poor whether, bad ball placement, etc and have to convert), target range, or you can play in tournaments for a bunch of money.
The gameplay is very smooth and you can play 18 holes with 4 players in under an hour (as opposed to 6 hours in real life). You're given the option to play stroke play (winner does best on overall score), or skins play (winner does best on the most holes). There are also other multiplayer options, including target shooting and racing (not my cup of tea, but oh well). Only complaint here is that the game can sometimes cause you to throw a tantrum if you miss a putt (or is that just me?).

Recap:

Control: 10
Sound: 6
Graphics: 9
Gameplay: 9
Overall: 8.5 (Rounded up to 9)

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 09/20/04