Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 07 Review

Anannya Sen’s Review

Another day, another EA Sports game.

EA are pretty well known for their Sports games, and I suppose on the consoles they do pretty well. The thing is, on a mobile format, you really have to think about how the game will play. Small screen, awkward controls but about 5 times the consumer base, so it's worth getting it right.

Tiger Woods Golf 2007 is, as you might be able to guess, a golf game. But it's a little different to the other golf games in terms of the controls. There are all the standard features of a golf game, plenty of players, different courses, challenges and trophy balls.

The graphics are not bad, but by no means amazing. The courses look decent but the game does take a fair bit of time to get to the actual fairways and greens on the aiming mode. And at the end of each shot, the distance and score take a while to come up. Then again, being an EA game, the courses and players are all licensed so you can play on your favourite course as your favourite players. The animation is also a little slow when you are taking your swing and on the actual shot, but this is probably due to the fact that there's a reasonable level of detail on the courses. The greens look nice and the trees and sand also look ok, but these are 2D graphics and they are missing a certain something. Sound is distinctly average. There's a tune when you load the game but it doesn't last long and there is nothing in the game itself. There are some sound effects, well, one really, which is just the sound of the ball sinking in the hole.

The control system is the big difference to the game, and I haven't made my mind up yet whether it's better or worse. Instead of having a power bar like basically every other golf game I've played, you have to depress the 5 button to begin your swing. When you think the swing has reached it's peak, or the percentage that you are trying to get, then you release the 5 button for the swing. You can add aftertouch on the ball and press 7 or 9 to add fade or bend to the ball while hitting it. But it's the lack of power bar which is new to me. The astute amongs you will realise that this means you have to judge the swing purely on sight. Whether the developers were thinking that it wold make the game more realistic or whether the developers were trying for something different I don't know. After a while I got the hang of hitting full power pretty easily, but any time I needed a percentage it was really hard. Especially if I was looking for a 90% hit or 95% hit.

Well, surely this shouldn't make too much of a difference in the game right? Well, it wouldn't have if the developers didn't make the game so hard. Even on the easy setting, and the first course, I was having to birdie a large number of holes just to stay in the running. In fact, I was thinking of titling the game Vijay Singh Golf instead of Tiger Woods golf. When I won the first course on easy, I was 7 under and Vijay had hit a few eagles and a bloody hole in one. It was only on the 18th he double bogeyed and allowed me to win with one shot.

There are challenges to play as well as the tournament which involve getting out of tricky situations, sinking within a certain shot count or landing a certain distance from the hole. As with the tournament mode, you can earn different types of trophy balls depending on what shots and scores you make. For example, you get one each time you hit the ball over a certain distance or if you get three birdies in a row etc.

The game plays ok, I certainly played it for a while until I had won a few tournaments and finished a few challenges. But it wasn't completely addictive and there were plenty of times I was getting quite frustrated by the percentages given not corresponding to where the ball ended up. The putting itself was a bit simple, the lie of the green didn't have too much of an effect on the shot, but for some reason the initial aim when putting is exactly on the hole. And with any undulating green, this won't be the correct power. You'll have to change it higher or lower depending on the slope, but as with the normal hitting, you have to press and hold the 5 button. With the putting swing a whole load shorted than a normal swing, you're going to have to be quite quick when it comes to holding and releasing in order to get full power. And you can forget about trying to get any percentage as the swing is far too quick.

Overall, a strange golf game which has all the players and greens but not too much of the actual fun of playing the real thing. Once again, EA fail to really deliver.