Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07

"A refreshing and challenging new edition of a great franchise"

Back in 2004, I bought my first game in the Tiger Woods PGA Tour series, and I enjoyed it immensely. I played it for three years and loved the realism of it; playing matches with pro golfers around the world, taking part in real PGA Tour events, and equipping yourself with real brand golf equipment and winning sponsorship deals for impressive play. I saw the list of additions for the 2007 version and decided that it would be a good time to purchase the latest version of the game. Here is what I think of it.

Graphics: The graphics on this game are exactly what one comes to expect from an EA Sports title, very crisp and impressive. I get the feeling that these graphics have maxed out the capabilities of the PS2 and provided a very realistic experience. The course details are finely tuned, from trees to cliffs to lakes and the surroundings are incredibly scenic and fresh. It looks like you are playing on a real golf course with perfectly formed trees, different lengths and thickness of grass, deep bunkers, well rendered slopes and waves that crash against the sides of cliff faces. The golfers themselves are also very well built and most of the featured pros look like the spitting image of their real-life counterparts. If you've been playing this series of games for years the graphics will not blow you away as they've been virtually the same for ages, but that is probably because the PS2's capabilities have been fully exploited. The game looks incredibly realistic, which is exactly what golf fans have come to expect from the EA Sports team.

Audio: The sound effects in the game are virtually unchanged from previous versions, and there is virtually no need to change them. There are different sounds when you take shots with different clubs, the crowd will applaud and cheer your good shots and groan at your bad ones. There is the usual banter from McCord and Feherty, the game's announcers, and also some very humorous new phrases for people who enjoy their commentary. The music on the game is all instrumental, which is a change from the usual pop music that is usually featured on the game. People will have different opinions of this change, but I think that the music gets fairly boring after a while. There is nothing spectacular about the game's audio and there aren't really any significant ways to improve it, so there really is no need to make any significant changes for each year's version of the game. The audio does the job just fine.

Gameplay: This is where the most significant changes from previous games have been made. You are presented with two different systems for swinging and for putting. The standard swing requires you to pull back and push forward the left analogue stick to make a straight swing, and move it back and forth at certain angles for draw or fade. The alternate swing system uses the right analogue stick to set draw or fade on your shot. I don't have much experience with this system but it should make draw and fade easier for those players that like to use it regularly. There is a new putting system, which is known as the standard system. It requires you to read the slope of the green and decide how much power you want to put on your putting stroke, often meaning you have to make the swing less than full as to not overshoot the hole. This system takes a bit of getting used to but it is a much more realistic system than the old one. Incidentally, the game offers the old system, now known as the alternative putting system, in which your caddy advises you how much left/right and longer/shorter than the hole to aim your putt, and then you just have to make a full putting swing to get it there. This system was much easier than the new one on previous games, but this year the advice that the caddy gives you is often completely wrong, forcing you to either miss the hole by miles or ignore the advice completely, making it much harder to hole putts. If you use the standard system, this won't be a problem, but people who want to use the alternate putting system will be annoyed by this.

On previous games, you could start the game with very poor attributes and win tournaments immediately. This year, the game has been made much more challenging. Achieving perfect accuracy is particularly difficult with poor stats, and any slight veering off with the stick will cause shots to go severely off to the side and into trouble. Winning matches and increasing these attributes will make the game much easier but you have to earn the ability to be able to play the perfect round.

The best way to increase these stats is by playing the brand new Team Tour mode, in which you have to beat teams of golfers in various game modes, and recruit the defeated golfers onto your team for subsequent events. Luckily, the golfers in the early matches are very poor which means that you will be able to beat them even with poor attributes, and the matches get harder as you go through and increase them. You will be playing as the other players on your team which means that you will not have to rely on the computer to play good shots for you, and you can increase the stats of all fictional characters on your team to give you a better chance of winning.

The PGA Tour season mode has been improved from previous games. Before you were able to enter every PGA tournament every season regardless of how good or bad a golfer you were. This year, certain prestigious events have entry requirements which mean that you will be required to achieve certain things on tour before you can enter these tournaments. Entry requirements include finishing high on the previous season's money list, winning a certain number of previous events, and featuring highly on the PGA Tour ranking list (which is a concept not dissimilar from the world rankings in real life). This means that being able to enter the prestigious tournaments, such as the majors, is an achievement in itself which makes the game a lot more realistic.

Other new game modes for this year include one ball, in which two teams compete by using a single ball between them and trying to ensure that they hole out before their opponents. You must hit the ball at least half the distance of the hole off the tee and there is a circle area around the hole in which you must hit the ball to avoid giving your opponents a free shot. This mode is entirely different from any other on the game, which is refreshing although the mode is not particularly realistic. Also introduced are greensome and bloodsome. Both are played by two teams of two golfers each and all four players tee off at the start of each hole. In greensome, each team chooses a tee shot and continues from that lie playing alternate shot. Bloodsome is almost the same but the opposing team chooses the tee shot which is used instead of the team that played it. These modes are very fun for those who enjoy playing with friends and are nice alternatives to the old fourball and bestball modes. There are also many new pro golfers to unlock this year, including Luke Donald, Ian Poulter, Michael Campbell, Mike Weir, Chris DiMarco and Annika Sorenstam.

This year's version of the game has many new game modes, which all add something positive to the game, and also features an improved season mode, which means it will now take longer than ever to win every tournament. The game is much more challenging than last year with the new putting system and increased difficulty when faced with low attributes. In my opinion, the gameplay is much more rewarding as a result of these changes and much more enjoyable once you have got used to the increased level of difficulty.

Lifespan: The game has many different modes available, and completing them all will take quite a while, especially the real time events, which take place every day so they cannot be completed until you have reached the day of the last event. The PGA Tour season mode runs for 30 seasons so that will keep you occupied for many a round. The game will also have you playing for a long time if you have friends to play multiplayer with, as multiplayer modes make the game last until you want to get the next update for sports games and there are many different modes to choose from, and many different pro golfers to play with. The game will take a long time to master and it will probably take you a long time to win all of the available trophies and achieve 100% completion, and even then you won't able to resist a few rounds here and there against the pro golfers or with your friends.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 06/07/07