Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07

"Golf...Such a simple game."

Every year we have come to expect certain games from EA, mostly sports games with updated rosters and new features. This year is no exception and they are proud to release Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07. In many peoples opinion this is a good thing as PGA Tour 06 for the Xbox 360 last year was a poor offering and in my opinion it started off on the wrong foot forcing you to do challenges and having the most annoying achievements ever. I am pleased to say then that this has been rectified and we are back to classic Tiger Woods (still without Tiger Vision though) and the achievements are more thought out than before. Lets dive in shall we?

Everyone who has played a Tiger Woods game is familiar on how it is set up. The basic idea is you create your character (mentioned later on), get skill points and play the PGA tour. However EA have gone beyond this basic structure this year and created one of the most enjoyable experiences in a golf game to date. Instead of purchasing skill points you have an opportunity to train your golfer through various exercises to build up his skill and make he/she an all round better golfer. However you cannot just stop at the training exercises, the reason for this is that you will have “unrealised potential” at the start of the game you can only take your skill points up to a usable 10% anything above this does not affect how well your golfer plays. In order to increase this limiter you need to play “Tiger Challenge” which pits you against the best players in the world ultimately ending in Tiger Woods and each player defeated will increase your limiter by 10%.

However the most enjoyable feature of career mode is that of PGA Tour. You get to enter a multitude of competitions and tournaments around the world to win the coveted FedEx cup, a feat not many people have achieved at this early stage of the game, and if they have it is safe to say they have no lives. Although only limited to a few years of playing time (in game) there are enough tournaments to play through to keep you entertained for months, and once your done you still have all the trophy balls to collect, eagles to achieve and countless other things to do. This game will last you at least until the next Tiger Woods hits the scene sometime next year.

Finally for the review of the single player game modes I move onto the “party” games. This is where you can challenge the computer, your friends, or failing that challenge yourself to some classic golf matches for example Match Play or Skins. There are two additional game modes this time round; bloodstone and greenstone which are 4 player co-op games. Where there are 2 on each side and in for example greenstone after your 2 tee shots you choose your best one to continue playing with, or in Bloodstone your opponent chooses for you, causing a lot of arguments if you play a bad tee shot. The most enjoyable however has to be one ball where as the name suggests you have one ball to play with and you and your opponent take it in turns to play the shot. However you can't mess up their next shots too badly or you will pay to price of a forfeit for your next couple of shots.

Now the last proper Tiger Woods I played was 05 on the Xbox, I briefly played 06 on the Xbox 360 but as I mentioned above I felt it was lacking in that special something. Having owned Links 2004 and playing it to death I felt totally prepared in coming to another Golf game and went straight to Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 however after playing for only half and hour I had secured more boge ys than a young toddlers stomach but I wasn't giving up. Now the difficulty isn't a bad thing, what Tiger Woods does well, and I don't know how (maybe mind control?) it keeps you coming back for more and more to improve on yourself despite your repeated failure. One of my major gripes about the controls however (and this isn't something that can be sorted as it appears in all golf games) is using the control stick to hit the ball. After playing for a while it will start to twist as you push it forward creating extremely crap shots.

Putting has also got more difficult, and at times can seem rather “glitchy”. There doesn't seem to be any system on getting the ball exactly right especially when playing the ball up or down hill. Even if you putt for hours on end you won't get perfect and will still miss easy shots, this is down to the fact that at times to ball can randomly stop around 1mm from the hole for no reason, even if it is downhill. This causes major aggravation, however it can be used to your advantage when on-line. I only won one hole and that is because this happened to the person I was playing against. However I presume this is all down to realism as no hole can ever truly be read perfectly, even by Tiger Woods. As I mentioned before for those that have skipped a generation of Tiger Woods games sadly Tiger Vision is no longer so you do need to work extremely hard in making those putts.

If you have been gaming as long as I have you will remember back to the old golf game days where courses consisted of only a few colours and there was no way to tell what the slope of a hill was to play your shot perfectly (granted I can't tell this even now) so it caused a lot of aggravation on your part. However as with all Tiger Woods games the courses are modelled perfectly for the console that it is on. Each blade of grass looks like it was individually crafted exactly the same as it would appear on the golf course and you can see each grain of sand rise into the air as you play your shot from the bunker. However the downside to this extra detail for the 360 version is that some courses don't appear in this version whereas they do in other consoles versions. However if you don't play them then you won't know what you are missing. Plus I would go for quality over quantity any day.

However the best feature of the courses is the wonderful scenery in the area. It looks like a professional golf course (which of course it is) which spectators standing around who clutch their private parts in agony if you “accidentally” hit a shot at them to see what they will do. I would love to see this in a real golf match on TV, maybe it would make it slightly more interesting?

Everyone knows that EA make top notch creators for your own personal character which no one else has come close to, and PGA Tour 07 is no exception to this rule and you can create a player that looks exactly like you even if you are 7ft tall and weigh 40 stone you will still be able to create yourself. Me, I kinda of look like a cross between Brad Pitt and David Beckham in the game (and I wish I did in real life)

I will now mention a brief piece on the achievements. Last years offerings and EA's first crack at it were notoriously hard to complete and seemed like an afterthought to the game, they were mostly based around on-line play. However this year EA have ditched this approach, they are now easier to achieve without being so easy that you will be racking up gamerpoints faster than Bill Gates and most of them are based on offline play, although the odd on-line one has sneaked into the pile to keep the EA servers active.

I am going to skip giving the live play aspect a thorough going over because it is pretty much the same as the standard game bar the PGA tour and with a couple of tournaments added on top. The new feature which does appear however is live updates from ESPN. However although at the risk of sounding slightly racist I had to mute at these times as I couldn't stand the American guys voice, although that is through no fault of EA. There isn't any lag in Live play so it feels as if you were sitting right next to the person, however at times you will be randomly disconnected from the game which is a problem on some of EA's servers.

Finally the issue of the Marketplace has been an issue on many gaming forums discussing Tiger Woods recently. This is that they charge for “cheats” that have appeared in the games before free of charge. This may seem abuse but I fell it is a great attempt by EA of stopping people cheating to complete the game. You need to pay around £3 to get the cheat to max out your golfer meaning there is a greater challenge on-line as you won't meet so many people that have cheated their way to the top and have no idea how to play the game.

In conclusion go out and buy this game, no matter what system go buy it. It is a major improvement on last years helping and things can only get better (now that I found you).

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/12/06